


a chi disobbedisce

by ImberNox



Category: A3! (Video Game)
Genre: M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, completely set within picaresque's universe, minor characters come later, minor chikaita, no longer subtle, you may notice that the chapter count has turned this into a five act play
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-27
Updated: 2020-08-13
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:40:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 33,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25544527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ImberNox/pseuds/ImberNox
Summary: It was one of those warm and quiet nights in mid-autumn when the houses along Spider Lane were dimly-lit and still-dripping with the water of that afternoon’s rain. The second-to-last house on the lane – a small white-painted, two-story household – was lit only by the candles in the parlor. An old record was on the gramophone : Italian lyrics lilting out amongst accordion and flute. And on the leather couch, Luciano and Lansky were curled up in the bare minimum of their day clothes under a woolen blanket.
Relationships: Hyoudou Juuza/Settsu Banri, Meyer Lansky/Lucky Luciano
Comments: 62
Kudos: 141





	1. delle scale battute dal rimorso/sento la tua discesa corrosa

**Author's Note:**

> This work acts as a continuation/sequel of Picaresque's storyline. I don't write action very often, so I'm afraid the action sequences aren't that great. I hope you enjoy this work anyways! I plan to post in three-five installments. Work and chapter titles come from Dario Bellezza's poetry.

It was one of those warm and quiet nights in mid-autumn when the houses along Spider Lane were dimly-lit and still-dripping with the water of that afternoon’s rain. The second-to-last house on the lane – a small white-painted, two-story household – was lit only by the candles in the parlor. An old record was on the gramophone : Italian lyrics lilting out amongst accordion and flute. And on the leather couch, Luciano and Lansky were curled up in the bare minimum of their day clothes under a woolen blanket.

Benjamin was asleep upstairs and had been since seven o’clock sharp that evening in accordance with Lansky’s insistence that he get more sleep to combat the autumn cold he had come down with. And, in the absence of him, Luciano and Lansky were enjoying the opportunity to kiss without interruption.

Lansky threads his fingers through Luciano’s hair – hair that’s gotten long enough now to brush Luciano’s shoulders – and Luciano groans a little against Lansky’s lips. He tugs at Lansky’s collar, and Lansky accepts the request, easing Luciano back down on the couch and hunching over him. They barely break the kiss.

Luciano lifts a leg to hook around the back of Lansky’s knee. They lay flush against each other excepting the fact that Lansky has propped himself up on his elbows – arms framing Luciano’s head – to give them a better angle. Halfway through their next kiss, Luciano wraps his arms around Lansky’s waist. Their wine glasses are still half-full where they sit on the coffee table. The bottle is an 1894 red from Puglia, Italy, that Luciano had paid a pretty penny for in Chicago some years ago before things had fallen to shit.

They ignore the expensive wine in favor of continuing to kiss half sweet-like and half messy-like. Lansky shifts his weight where he lays, and the friction against Luciano prompts a quiet grunt from both of them. They continue the movements and end up rolling their hips lazily against each other.

Luciano breaks from the kiss to sigh. He moves his hands up to cup Lansky’s jaw.

“You sure the kid’s actually asleep? He stayed up reading with his flashlight last night.”

“He better be asleep. Damn idiot’s forgotten how precarious his health is.”

“Ah, come on,” Luciano always tries to put up an argument on Benjamin’s side. God knows Lansky won’t hear a word of the kid’s protests. “Let him be a kid. We’ve got the money to cover any bills that might come our way.”

Lansky grunts but doesn’t respond. Instead, he dips to press another kiss to Luciano’s lips. They continue where they left off with little kisses and light grinding. With Benjamin in the house, neither is necessarily eager to take it any further. It’s an unspoken rule that they’ve had ever since Benjamin had gotten home from school one afternoon and walked in on Luciano pressing wet kisses to Lansky’s neck in the kitchen. The kid had been good about it and vanished up to his room while the two straightened themselves out in silent embarrassment, but it set a hard precedent for keeping things decent in the house. But if Benjamin’s sleeping, then things are a little different.

The gramophone’s music cuts off and a soft static filters out of its speaker now that the record’s ended. The sound of their kissing becomes the loudest sound in the room until Luciano pulls away. He stands up and walks over to the gramophone, lifting the needle and beginning to put the record away.

“Should we finish the bottle?” Lansky asks from behind him.

Luciano shrugs. He says over his shoulder, “Eh. We can cork it and leave it for tomorrow. It’s getting late.”

Lansky glances at the grandfather clock in the corner, noting the time. Luciano follows his gaze and reads the time as ten thirty. For two men who used to be active in the nightlife of Chicago, eleven o’clock as the new ‘late’ was certainly a stark contrast. It had been a natural progression for them, though. First it had been retiring at one in the morning after a strict review of stocks and newspapers, trying to follow the movements of the Chicago gangs from the one-and-a-half hour distance of Ottawa, Illinois. Then, it had been midnight after reviewing only the newspapers. Now, they no longer follow the newspapers, nor the radio.

“It was an expensive bottle, wasn’t it? Something like that should be enjoyed in a single evening until empty.”

Luciano turns around halfway and raises an eyebrow at Lansky. “You want to get drunk?”

“We’re not going to get drunk off a single bottle of wine.”

“Yeah? You’re a fucking lightweight, Lansky. One more glass and you’ll be tipsy.”

“I never thought I’d hear an Italian back down from finishing a bottle.”

Luciano narrows his eyes at that. Lansky’s challenging him, and he knows it. There are still hints of their past rivalry in their relationship now, and these sorts of challenges – jabs at Luciano’s pride in being Italian – are the most notable of them. Lansky pours wine into his glass to bring it back to full and leans back against the couch with a confident smirk. Luciano resists the urge to go over and sock the bastard.

He sets the record, now covered and back in its liner and jacket, in its spot on the bookshelf. Ignoring Lansky, he takes his time picking another one to put on. He thinks to himself if he’s feeling folk more than classical or classical more than folk. And, then, he thumbs through the albums, wondering which folk music he’d like to listen to. If Lansky’s in the mood to get drunk and end up naked in bed together, then perhaps Southern music would be better than Northern.

Luciano scoffs as he takes out a Southern folk album – a lovely crooning album from Sicilia about the hard labor of wheat farmers. Maybe, listening to lyrics about flowers and uncertain futures will discourage him from getting too out-of-hand with Lansky. It won’t matter either way to Lansky, at least. The damn idiot never bothered to learn a lick of Italian. He puts it on and turns around to return to the couch when he stops still.

Lansky, in the lengthy pause, has taken off his suspenders and untucked his shirt. It hangs half-unbuttoned, showing off his chest, and the tails of it are pushed to the side. He’s unbuttoned his trousers, too, and pushed them along with his belt down his hips enough to free himself from their confines.

Luciano feels his hands and face go hot at the sight. It’s not often that Lansky takes initiative on this sort of thing. Luciano’s always been the sexually-driven one between them : wasting his money at brothels and at dirty film screenings while Lansky took odd jobs to save up for Benjamin’s expenses. So, it hasn’t been necessarily unexpected that Lansky doesn’t have nearly the experience or drive that Luciano has for these sorts of things. But, when Lansky _does_ , it never fails to get Luciano hot under his clothes.

“See something you like?” Lansky asks him, twirling the wine in his glass at Luciano.

 _Damn_ , Luciano thinks. Half of it is already gone. If Lansky wasn’t close to tipsy before, he’s definitely there now. He wonders briefly if he should steal the bottle away and drink it himself before Lansky rests a hand on his upper thigh as an invitation and Luciano’s mind goes blank as he crosses the room.

He leans over Lansky and kisses him slow, taking advantage of his sober dexterity to slip the wine glass from Lansky’s right hand.

“Oi,” Lansky pulls away. “Give that back.”

“You’re drinking too much,” Luciano grumbles. He tosses the rest of the glass back and feels the rich flavor deep in his throat. “I’m not carrying you upstairs if you get drunk.”

Lansky doesn’t argue for once. He’s too distracted by the hand Luciano rests on his knee while Luciano sets the glass back down on the coffee table and away from his partner. He slides his hand up Lansky’s thigh and stops once he’s barely brushing where Lansky would really like him to be. Lansky glares at him sourly, and Luciano chuckles. He gets his kicks from seeing Lansky ask for him, for sure.

“Charlie,” Lansky warns. _Ah_ , they’ve made it into first name territory. “Not tonight.”

“I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.”

Lansky rips Luciano’s hand from his thigh and pulls Luciano onto his lap. “I want it sweet-like tonight. None of your damn tricks.”

Luciano scoffs but settles further into Lansky’s lap as he kisses Lansky. He wraps one arm around Lansky’s neck and slips the other hand into Lansky’s lap, earning him a deep groan. Lansky’s hands settle on Luciano’s waist and set to pulling his dress shirt from his pants : belt long since discarded. His fingers dip lower than is polite, and Luciano breathes heavy when pinkie fingers dip below the hem of his underpants at the back.

He’s about to dip his kisses lower to Lansky’s neck when there’s the sudden and almost-indistinguishable sound of a knock at the front door.

They freeze where they are and wait. Twenty seconds, Luciano counts and almost wants to dismiss it as the creaking of the house’s foundation, but the knock comes again harder and in a triplet.

Lansky wrenches Luciano off his lap and onto the couch beside him, furiously going to close his pants. Luciano jumps to his feet and fixes his own.

“Who the fuck is that?” Luciano hisses in a whisper at Lansky.

“I’ve no fucking clue,” Lansky hisses back.

They’re equally panicked and for good reason. No one in Ottawa, Illinois would knock on a door so professionally at eleven in the evening. This is their city-life, come back from months past to deliver retribution, and they both know it.

 _Fuck_ , Luciano wants to yell. He’s busy trying to remember where the fuck they put their box of guns when Lansky moves hurriedly to the globe by the back window and opens it. He tosses Luciano’s high caliber onto the armchair and pulls out his own, smaller gun. Lansky putting the silencer on his gun gives Luciano enough time to peek around the staircase towards the front door.

He can only see the silhouette of one person, but there’s no telling how many grunts have been sent to collect them.

“Luci,” Lansky is behind him with both of their guns. He presses Luciano’s into Luciano’s hands. “I’ll handle this.”

Luciano wants to argue that he’s, objectively, the more capable of the two of them at taking men down, but they’re out of time. “I’ll get Benjamin and high-tail it out of here,” he promises. “We’ll wait for you at the library.”

Lansky nods and goes to set off to the front door, but Luciano catches his wrist roughly. “What are-” Lansky goes to question, but Luciano presses a kiss to his lips and cuts him off.

“You better fucking meet us there, bastard.”

Lansky tightens his grip on his gun and nods once : short and rough. “You better be there when I arrive.”

Lansky goes to the door, and Luciano sneaks up the staircase as fast as he can without alerting those outside. Benjamin’s room is furthest in the back, and Luciano wonders wildly if the house is surrounded or if they can make a break out the window.

He gets into Benjamin’s room and finds the kid already out of bed and throwing on his shoes. Clearly, he had been awake and reading.

“I heard the front door. Is it from Chicago?”

“I don’t know, kid. We’re making a break for it to the library.” He locks the door and goes to the window, opening it. He peers out to the woods. He doesn’t see anyone, and the drainage pipe is stable enough. He turns back to Benjamin and eyes him. “Can you make it on your own feet?”

“I’ll try my best.”

Luciano wonders if Lansky realizes just how lucky he is to have such a good little brother.

“Alright. I’ll go first. You follow me as soon as I get down, alright?”

“What if there’s someone down there?”

“Then you stay up here and hide. You’re just a kid. They might not hurt you so bad.”

And, with that, he ducks out the window and curses his luck as he slides down the rickety hunk of metal attached haphazardly to the side of the house. He hits the grass and raises his gun, already prepared for someone to come looming out of the shadows.

No one comes.

He glances up and sees Benjamin half out of the window. He adjusts his grip on the pistol. His palms are sweating something fierce, and he hasn’t even fired a single shot. It’s been eight months since he’s had to use the damn thing. A high caliber gun isn’t something to just pick up after a long hiatus, Luciano knows this, and he’s damning himself and Lansky for not going to the shooting range every damn weekend. Now, they’re up shit creek and rusty with their aim, to boot.

The gunshot nearly deafens him, and he jumps out of his skin when he hears it. It must have scared Benjamin good, too, because the boy falls the rest of the way down, having let go of the pipe in shock.

He gets Benjamin to his feet and pulls the boy with him as they run for the tree line. Because hidden in the thicket except for a dirt track leading to the road, Lansky and Luciano have kept their car away from their house in case something like this ever happened. Luciano can only pray to whatever God there is that their visitors haven’t found it already and are waiting.

Two more gunshots echo in the night before they reach the trees. They come one after the other. Luciano tries to ignore the firing pattern so characteristic of a clean execution and focuses instead on pulling Benjamin with him. The boy has gone limp ever since the first gunshot, and Luciano practically carries him as they run.

The car is untouched, as far as Luciano can tell. He doesn’t have the time to survey their surroundings. He throws the passenger door open and shoves Benjamin inside before running to the driver’s side. He gets the keys from his pocket and starts the engine. The headlights flood the dirt path in front of them. If they’re lucky, they’ll have enough time to get onto the main road before their pursuers begin firing after the car.

Luciano releases the clutch and slams his foot on the pedal, shifting the gear in a fury. The car lurches forwards with a guttural roar from the engine. The first gunshot aimed for them comes not a moment later. The bullet crashes through the backseat windows, and Benjamin shrieks.

“Keep your damn head down!” Luciano yells at him, shoving him down in the seat as they come swinging out of the trees on the sharp bend of the path.

They make it onto the main road, and the second shot comes through the back window and out the front windshield. Luciano’s flooring the gas, and the car’s still not moving fast enough to escape the third and fourth shots.

“Fuck!” Luciano yells and waits for the fifth shot.

It never comes. Luciano takes the turn onto Cosmo Street and lets the car roar down the road. He doesn’t fucking care that they’re loud enough to wake the whole neighborhood and attract the police. If he can just get to Route 6, he could have a chance to lose anyone coming after them.

Benjamin is still shaking in the passenger seat, and Luciano keeps a hand on his shoulder for emotional support as he drives. He wants to say something to reassure him, but he doesn’t know what he can say. With the sound of the gunshots, it’s a safe bet that Lansky’s gone. They’re going to be next, too, if Luciano isn’t smart about this get-away. He takes the turn onto Route 6 and lowers his speed down to 40 as they head into downtown.

The library is a conspicuous building but less-so than the city hall or town’s Catholic church. When Lansky were first choosing where to move after the mess in Chicago, the location of the library as a safe space had been one of the things that had drawn them here. Now, Luciano’s just glad that they had that conversation beforehand so that he’s more prepared for this.

He parks the car three blocks down and around the corner : in front of a hotel. With any luck, any pursuers will comb through the hotel instead of coming around knocking to the library.

“Ben,” he turns to his little step-brother. “We gotta move.”

Benjamin is still slumped and shaking. Luciano bites his lip and checks the rearview mirror. No movement.

He gets out of the car and moves around to the passenger side, shoving his gun into his pants for the time being. He opens the door gently. Benjamin needs to take things slowly. It’s the kid’s first time really getting caught in the crossfire, and the first time his brother hasn’t been on his heels for the rescue. What happened with Dewey eight months ago seems a farce now.

“Benny,” Luciano tries in a soft tone of voice. “We need to move. I promised Meyer I’d get you to the library.”

A sob breaks free from Benjamin’s lips. Sighing, Luciano leans into the car and wraps his arms around the boy, resting his face in Benjamin’s hair.

Luciano’s not mushy. He never has been. When his mama died when he was fourteen, he hadn’t cried. He went out into the streets blackmailing kids his age on the block for money in exchange for protection from the Irish kids. He had started his street life and got into Capone’s gang within two years. So, no, he’s not mushy. But just for Benjamin’s sake, he presses a kiss to the boy’s head and holds him a little tight.

“Benny, we have to go now. We can… talk… when we get to the library. But I promised your brother.”

Benjamin continues to shake in his arms, but he lets Luciano coax him from the passenger seat and out of the car. Luciano picks him up because making the kid walk three blocks now just seems cruel. He doesn’t even bother to lock the car.

He carries Benjamin the full three blocks to the library. Not a single car passes. Not a single person is out on the streets. The curtains to the apartment buildings are closed, though some of them are still lit dimly. They reach the doors of the library, and Luciano sets Benjamin down. They slip in through the doors quietly.

The library is admittedly shitty and nothing like Chicago’s public libraries. The carpet smells of must, the shelves are packed together tightly and disorganized with crude drawings and loose papers laid on top of the books. The lights have trouble staying on half the time for whatever reason – shitty wiring or shitty bulbs – and flicker intermittently.

But the good of it is that it’s easy to hide amongst the shelves, and there’s no formal sign-in at the front counter. The librarian seems to not care about their entrance. She spares them a single glance before returning to the return slips she’s filing.

Luciano leads them further into the back where the staff offices are : behind the shelves upon shelves of encyclopedias. He sits Benjamin down in a chair off in the corner and kneels in front of him. Benjamin has stopped sobbing, but his hands still shake.

Luciano still has no idea what to say. He takes Benjamin’s hands in his own and rests them on the boy’s knees. They sit there quietly with their heads bowed as the minutes pass.

“He’ll… he promised to meet us here,” Luciano whispered thickly.

Benjamin sniffles. “Is he dead?” Luciano closes his eyes and buries his face in Benjamin’s knees. “Is my big brother dead?”

There’s a distinct pain in Luciano’s chest that he doesn’t want to linger on. He wants to do what he always does and go out guns blazing to put the bastards who’ve ruined his happiness into the ground. But he has Benjamin now, and he has to act like the big brother Lansky was for him.

“I don’t know,” he says. He squeezes Benjamin’s hands and looks up at him. “But we’re going to wait here for him. And if by dawn… We’ll decide what to do at dawn.”

God knows he doesn’t want to think about what they’ll have to do if Lansky doesn’t show by dawn. Benjamin nods, and that’s enough for Luciano. He settles himself against the wall next to the chair and stares at the carpet.

If Lansky doesn’t show by dawn, he supposes he’ll take Benjamin in the car and drive out to New York City. He hasn’t stepped foot in that city in years now, but he has old buddies there that would offer them protection under the condition that Luciano goes back into business with them. It’s all he can do to protect the kid. Tino, at the very least, would do anything to protect a kid.

There’s no clock in sight where they are in the library, and Luciano’s too exhausted to go looking for one. It must be hours that they sit there in silence. Benjamin falls asleep after a while in the chair. He looks uncomfortable curled up in the wooden seat, and Luciano wishes that he at least had a coat to drape over him. Instead, he sits there and listens to Benjamin’s snores as he waits.

Slowly, he begins to give up hope. The drive from their home to downtown is only fifteen minutes. It’s not- It shouldn’t- There’s no way it’s taking Lansky hours to walk to them. Even if he’s bleeding. Even if he has bullets lodged in him.

The mental image of Lansky bleeding out on the side of the road hurts too much, and Luciano grits his teeth. He should have fucking stayed. They should have known this was coming. If they had just _thought_ a little harder about their situation, they would have realized that this was inevitable. City strife usually blows over in a few weeks, sure, but this was a little different. They’ve killed a lot of people, and they have an inordinate amount of inside knowledge about Capone’s rings. They know too much to be left alive.

They could have taught Benjamin to drive. And if they had done that, Benjamin could have driven here by himself. Luciano could have stayed behind and helped Lansky.

… _No,_ Luciano admits. Benjamin needed him here. And, if Lansky gets here- _when_ Lansky gets here, he’s going to be damn proud of his little brother for being strong enough to survive.

He waits what feels like another hour, going up and down the highs of thinking that Lansky’s body might already be cold and believing that Lansky’s on his way, before he realizes that he can’t sit still any longer. He stands up and gently shakes Benjamin awake.

“Huh?” Benjamin mutters. “What is it? Is he here?”

“No, kid,” Luciano tells him. “I’m going to the front desk to see what time it is. Stay here for me. And keep your eyes out.” Benjamin nods. He’s already at full alertness despite how taxing this evening has been for him. “If you see anything,” Luciano stresses, “just start screaming your head off. I’ll get to you first, I swear to God.”

“I promise.” Benjamin doesn’t even blink.

Luciano gives the boy’s shoulder a rub and pinches his cheek before leaving him. He hasn’t seen a soul in the building the entire time, but he’s still jumping at shadows like a kid new to the streets.

He gets to the front desk only to find it empty.

Immediately, he draws his gun. _The doll could_ _’_ _ve gone to the toilet_ , he reasons with himself, but it doesn’t calm him in the slightest. He inches towards the desk and half-expects someone to jump up and pop a slug right into his stomach. No one does, but he keeps waiting for it to happen. He peeks over the counter and finds the floor empty. The clock on the desk reads 2:34.

It’s the last thing that Luciano registers before everything becomes a blur. The bag is over his head and hands are over his mouth before he can let out a single noise. Strong hands wrench the gun out of his hands. It’s not the first time he’s been bagged. He’s trying to convince himself that he’s _got_ this just like he had it the time Fat Sal’s guys jumped him behind the bank. He drops his weight done and thrusts hard back into the guy behind him, digging an elbow into his ribs. He hears the guy shout in pain. _Goal_ , he thinks and dives forwards in the direction that the hands that took his gun pulled.

He doesn’t hit the goal this time, though. A boot kicks into his ribcage from the side and, winded, he collapses to the floor. By the time he’s caught his breath, they’ve tied his wrists.

“Now, don’t you fucking move,” a voice threatens him off to his right. “One wrong move, and we’ll fucking put a bullet in your brain. You got that?”

Luciano can’t respond. Hands are still over his mouth. He grunts an affirmative, and they seem to take it as such.

“Where the fuck is Lansky?” another guy asks : in front of Luciano.

“Who the fuck knows? Who the fuck cares. Let’s get the fuck back to Chicago with this dipshit before that fucker comes out of the shadows with his rifles.”

Luciano hides the sigh of relief. They can take him, for all he cares. They can question him in Chicago, kill him, and dump his body in the lake for all he cares. They don’t seem to realize that Benjamin is five rooms away, and they’re talking about Lansky as if he’s still alive. And, so, he doesn’t pitch a fight when they drag him out the door or when they toss him into the trunk of their gasoline-reeking car.

When the trunk latch slams shut, he _does_ breathe a sigh of relief. They’ve tied the bag around his neck, so there’s no getting it off. They tied his feet, too, in addition to his hands. He’s got nothing to do but wait the hour and a half until they get to Chicago. But in the meantime, he tries to recall all of the prayers of thanks that the fathers at his mama’s church used to say. There’s a lot he has to be thankful for even with how short his life has been.

The car rumbles to life, and he can feel the familiar turns of downtown’s streets until they get back out on the state route. He’s getting dizzy, and he wonders if they hit him hard enough to concuss him after the stunt he pulled.

 _Lansky, you bastard_ , he thinks fuzzily. _Wherever the fuck you are. You better get Benjamin and get out of the state. Get all the way to New York and offer up your services to Tino. Live your life with your little brother, and don_ _’_ _t you dare fucking come after me._


	2. dalla speranza

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw // minor mentions of anti-semitism against lansky

There’s still a good many hours before dawn by the time Lansky makes it to the point where Route 6 loses its ditch and gains a sidewalk as it begins to lead into the downtown. He’s lost a lot of blood so far tonight, and more of it continues to leak out of his wounds every time he takes another step. There’s a bullet lodged in his upper arm, and he swears he can feel the metallic taste of it in his mouth. It’s not the first time he’s been shot, but every gunshot wound always hurts the same. He’s dizzy, too, and he’s praying that he doesn’t faint before he makes it to where he needs to be.

Not a single car has passed along the road since he began walking, but it doesn’t make a bit of difference. Whoever would be driving by in this time of the night wouldn’t offer a hitch to a guy like him, especially when he’s barely dressed and blood-stained shoulder to waist.

He can only hope that whoever staged this hasn’t left a car at the eastside of downtown, waiting for them if they tried to make a break for the safety of brick buildings and concrete sidewalks. He doesn’t think Luciano would be weak enough to lose against a few gunshots through car windows, but they’re both out of practice. Lansky realizes that he has no way of knowing if that bastard’s shots had managed to hit Benjamin. Suddenly, the two bullets he lodged into the man's skull seems a forgiving punishment.

In fact, maybe he had been too lenient with all of them. At the time, he had been thinking only to take them down as fast as he could, and the standard execution procedure of two bullets to the forehead had served its purpose. But maybe if he had taken two alive – or even just one – he could’ve gotten a name out of them. And a name would've given him a target to get back at for destroying what small happiness Luciano and he had built together in this small town.

He passes by the park near the middle of town and comes into sight of the library. It’s a shabby little thing with a narrow doorstep and only a few, cramped floors to its name. The light’s on in the front, signaling to Lansky that one of the librarians had decided to work overtime that night. He can’t exactly go in through the front door looking as he does, even if the lady would recognize him, so he goes to one of the windows that’s a room over from the lobby and chisels away at the frame.

It’s easy enough to break through. He, at least, hasn’t lost his skill set from breaking through hotel windows as he so often did back in the city.

The inside of the library is silent and still like the night outside, but this dark silence is reassuring with strong walls that the open night air lacks. Lansky moves quietly through the shelves to the hallway, and, peering down the hall to check for bodies, goes to the back room. The small room of reference books is damn near impossible to navigate without losing one’s way the first visit, and, after he and Luciano had turned the wrong way for the third time way back when they were first scouting for a good safe place, they had agreed that the reference room would be the place to go to in case of emergencies.

Turning around the 030-031 row, he sees Benjamin curled up in a wooden chair at the end. Benjamin launches out of the chair before Lansky can say a word and crashes into Lansky’s chest with as much force as a sickly sixteen-year-old can muster.

“Big bro,” Benjamin sobs into Lansky’s shirt fabric. “Oh my god, you’re alive.”

“Yeah,” Lansky holds Benjamin close and ignores the pain in his shoulder. “Yeah, I’m alive.” He lets Benjamin hang there for a little, but he’s waiting for Luciano to walk around the corner and join them. And it’s taking Luciano a damn while. “Benny, where’d Luciano go to?” Lansky’s hoping the idiot didn’t go off to the bathroom and just leave his little brother sitting there alone.

The answer he receives is a sniffle and a tighter hold. Lansky freezes. How had he been stupid enough to worry only that one of those gunshots had hit Benjamin and not worry about Luciano also? Then, he remembers seeing the car turn onto Cosmo Street, and he reassures himself that Luciano must have been well enough to at least drive him and Benjamin here. And if Luciano had been well enough to do that, then nothing would have stopped the man from walking into this library.

“Benjamin,” Lansky repeats himself. He pulls his brother away, holding him close but still far enough to make eye contact with him. “Where’s Luciano?”

“I don’t know.” Lansky can see Benjamin trying to compose himself and failing. “I don’t know. He said he was going to check the time like twenty minutes ago, and he went to the front lobby, but I was scared and I kept thinking someone was just waiting to kill me, so I went after him, but there were all these men, and they had bagged him, and I didn’t know what to do, so I hid back here, and-”

“What people?”

“I don’t know. I- They were speaking Italian, and I didn’t understand what they were saying because I’m still so bad at it. But I think they said _città_ at one point, but I’m not sure.”

“ _Città_?” Lansky repeats. Damn the Italians for never using English when on the job.

“Chicago. The city. Are they going to kill him?”

Lansky sighs. If it was twenty minutes ago, then the men must already be out of town and on the northbound state route. There’s nothing that Benjamin or him could do now to stop them from taking Luciano back to the city.

He maneuvers Benjamin back to the chair and sits him down. He’s pulling away when Benjamin seems to first notice the wound in his shoulder.

“Oh my god,” Benjamin whispers. His hand reaches out shaking for Lansky’s shoulder. “Did they do that to you?”

Lansky brushes off his brother’s hand. “Yeah,” he grunts. “I had a hard time taking all of them down.” He shows his hands to Benjamin, revealing a few broken fingers. “One of them got their hands on me and tried pulling some shit before I got the upper hand.”

Benjamin is pale where he sits, and Lansky worries that he’s said too much. His brother’s never been sensitive to the wounds that he often bore when visiting the hospital, but this must feel a lot more real to Benjamin now that he’s been part of the violence himself.

“Are they going to do that to Luciano, too?” Benjamin asks.

“I… don’t know.”

Privately, he thinks that whoever tries torturing Luciano would regret it as soon as they start. Luciano has a pretty face, sure, but Lansky’s seen it twisted into grotesque hatred too much to underestimate his partner. Luciano would sooner break the arms of the chair he’s tied to then be subjected to some kind of torture or humiliation.

Benjamin, however, hasn’t ever seen Luciano at his worst, and Lansky hopes he’ll never have to. 

“You’re going to go get him, aren’t you?”

Lansky has a hard time meeting Benjamin’s eyes. If he were being completely honest with himself, then the answer would be yes. Nothing has stood between him and Luciano ever since the first day they were partnered, and Lansky would go to Chicago for him even if there were another ten men waiting for them outside this very moment.

But the reality is that Benjamin can’t be left alone in that house. Not only is he sick and still left disabled from the complications of his surgery, but there is always the chance that more men could come. He knows, too, that Luciano will be furious the second he sees Lansky. For whatever reason Lansky can’t even fathom, Luciano’s taken to Benjamin like new mothers do to their babies. Lansky will never hear the end of it if he leaves Benjamin behind.

His hesitation seems to unease Benjamin, who leans forward in the chair. When Lansky hesitates further, Benjamin reaches out to take Lansky’s hand in a light hold.

“You have to go get Luciano,” Benjamin says, and Lansky hates that his little brother is trying to reassure him : encourage him to go get his lover at the potential cost of Benjamin’s well-being.

“It’s not that easy. There will be resistance. I can’t promise I’ll come back, and you need me with you.”

“I need both of you.” Benjamin’s eyes are fierce. “Luciano’s my big brother now, too. I love him, too.”

“Benjamin.”

“I know you want to go get him. You’d go to get him even if I begged you to stay, wouldn’t you?”

“Of course not,” Lansky argues, but he’s not sure if his answer is the truth.

“Please?”

Lansky debates with himself for another second as Benjamin looks up at him with pleading eyes. If he’s going to do this, he’d have to leave tonight : make it to the city before dawn. If he can do that, then he can stay at the Swan Hotel and make some visits around town asking for Kuni. And then, Lansky realizes his decision has already long-since been made.

“You’ll stay at the neighbor’s,” Lansky tells Benjamin. The boy lightens with relief and relaxes back into the chair with a soft and sad smile. “Tracey and William are nice people. You’ve spoken with them a few times now, haven’t you? They’ll take care of you while I’m gone if I ask.”

“When are we going?”

Lansky helps his brother out of the chair and leads them down the row of stuffy shelves towards the doorway. “I’ll take you home to pack now. Where’d Luciano park the car? The hotel?”

“You got it.”

Lansky huffs a sigh. For how uncontainable Luciano had been in the early days of their partnership, he’s surprisingly loyal to the plans he and Lansky made after leaving the city. Loyal in all things from the monogamy of their relationship to their emergency plans for worst case scenarios, apparently.

“I’m giving you twenty minutes to pack once we get home. Make sure you have all of your school things.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I mean it. Don’t forget your maths book just because you don’t like the subject.” Lansky levels Benjamin with a strict glare as they exit the building and make a right down the sidewalk. “Once you move in with William and his wife, you’re not to go back into that house for a thing, do you hear me?”

“I do.”

“Not a thing.”

“Not a thing.”

Lansky nods curtly. A car is coming up in the oncoming lane, and the glare of the headlights means that he can’t see who the driver is. He pulls Benjamin close to his side and gets in front of him as much as he can without breaking their pace.

The car passes, and Lansky reads over his shoulder a local license plate. He relaxes his grip on Benjamin’s arm.

“If you need any help with your subjects, I’m sure Tracey will help you. You can also ask your teachers after school, if they’re willing to pick you up after school. If they can’t, make sure you catch the bus every day.”

“I know.”

“Luciano isn’t here to pick you up anymore when you miss it.”

“I know!”

Lansky blinks and then eases off. “But he’ll be back soon.” When Benjamin doesn’t respond, he adds, “I promise.”

“I know,” Benjamin mumbles.

They’ve made it to the car, and there still isn’t a single hostile in sight. Lansky opens the passenger door for Benjamin and helps lift him up and into the seat. The cold of the night has stiffened Benjamin’s joints. He then rounds the hood of the car and climbs into the driver’s seat.

It’s only once he’s behind the wheel that he notices the bullet holes in the windshield. He counts them quickly, reaching to the number four. He’s forgotten already after which shot he killed the man firing after the car.

“How many bullets hit the car?” he asks Benjamin. If there’s a bullet lodged in one of the seats, he’ll want to fix it eventually.

“Four. Luciano shoved my head down for them all, but they missed us.”

Lansky breathes out heavily. He knows he’s already asked the man to share the rest of their lives together, but this entire situation has proven to him how much more he should have appreciated the ‘yes’ that Luciano had given him.

He starts the car, and the engine sputters a bit before properly turning over. He releases the clutch, backs out of the parking space, and drives them down onto Main Street.

The drive back is silent. With the moon hanging low over the empty cornfields, the night feels surreal in how quiet it is now that everything is over. Clouds are low on the horizon, inching closer to the moon. It’s a cold night, but not as cold as the weather station on the radio has been predicting it will get for the rest of the week. The rainstorms that have been around the town for the last day are predicted to turn into slush by Thursday evening.

Lansky doesn’t bother parking the car back up the dirt path into its spot amongst the trees. He turns off the engine with the car at the front of their lot by the mailbox. They sit in quiet for a moment.

“Twenty minutes,” he reminds Benjamin. “Leave your things at the top of the stairs, and I’ll carry them down for you.”

Benjamin nods.

“And I mean it about the maths book. Don’t just leave it behind.”

Benjamin nods, then opens the door of the car. Lansky sighs once Benjamin’s shut the door behind him. He’s not eager to go back inside yet, either.

He gets out of the car and follows Benjamin up the front lawn to their porch. One of the men’s blood is still stained on the white wood. Benjamin glances at it and doesn’t say a word as he goes inside. Lansky knows there are two more body outlines in the kitchen, but he doesn’t hear a peep from Benjamin about it.

He’ll deal with the blood later. For now, he should see what he can do for his shoulder. He goes inside and searches the kitchen for the drawer that Luciano stuffed their first aid kit into. He finds it on the fourth guess and swings it onto the kitchen counter. Along with the sound of his hissing at the sting of the disinfectant, the static of the gramophone fills the air. He’ll need to take the record off before he leaves.

He hears Benjamin moving things around in his room upstairs as he threads the needle and sets to stitching up the tear in his flesh. By the time he’s finished, he hears Benjamin starting to move things towards the top of the steps.

He puts the needles in the sink and the rest of the aid kit away before he stretches his shoulder out a little, testing to see how limited his range of movement has become. It’s more limited than he’d like, and he decides to stretch it out a little during the drive. He’ll need to be at his best in Chicago. Because for all the allies and friends Luciano had among the members of the mafia, Lansky has always been little more than an insect to most of the people he’s worked with. He’ll have little help in the city.

“Big bro!” Benjamin calls from the top of the steps. “I have everything ready.”

“Coming.”

Lansky climbs the stairs and steps around the suitcase Benjamin has packed and his school satchel. He makes a vague motion that Benjamin should wait for him as he goes into his and Luciano’s room. He changes into his old city clothes and grabs his shoulder holster. The rub of the leather over his shoulders is a familiar reassurance, though it’s one that he never thought he’d have to wear again. He rejoins Benjamin at the stairs.

“You have everything?”

“Yep.”

“Toothbrush, pajamas, everything?”

“I told you I do,” Benjamin complains.

Lansky grunts and carries the bags down – sets them by the front door. He goes back into the parlor to take the record off the gramophone. He knows little about Luciano’s way of filing music on the shelves, so he lays it on top of the coffee table rather than try finding its place. It’s then that his attention is drawn to the bottle of wine and the two empty glasses.

He corks the bottle roughly and leaves it on the table.

“Let’s go,” he tells Benjamin.

Explaining things to the neighbors was easier that Lansky had anticipated it being. William and Tracey Boothe lived a half mile down the road, after all, and the excuse of the car engine backfiring had appeased them enough. It probably helped that Benjamin was a sweet a boy as he was and buttered them over the second they had opened the door despite it being four in the morning.

Now, Lansky is already taking the exit off of 90 to get onto the Ike and drive down to La Salle. There’s an old pizza joint down by West Harrison that Luciano had taken him to a few times to get names and money from the owner, who was one of the old men who used to run Tino’s family out in Chicago before Tino pulled all his people back to New York.

Lansky parks his car in the first street-side parking he can find open, and he eyes the street for meter cops before foregoing the charge and walking the block down to Guy’s Pizzeria.

The building is a bit run-down, and the door frame is crumbling towards the hinges. But Lansky knows that Guy has the information he wants, so he enters and stares at the five people that glance up immediately upon his entrance. _Well_ , he hadn’t exactly been expecting to walk into the middle of a meeting.

“Who are you?” one of them demands immediately.

Lansky lets the door swing shut behind him. All of the men have already sized him up, and there’s no easy way to take care of this.

“An associate of Charlie Luciano,” he answers.

“Yeah? Prove it.”

Lansky is forcibly reminded why he hated working with these Italian bastards so much. “I don’t need to prove it,” he said. He raised a hand off his gun holsters and points to Guy, who’s standing behind the counter with one hand suspiciously lingering beneath the countertop : likely resting on his own gun. “That one knows who I am.”

The other four men turn to Guy, waiting for his answer.

Guy meets Lansky’s gaze steadily. Guy knows what went down with Lansky and Luciano nearly a year ago now, and Lansky’s waiting to see if Guy sells him out or not.

“Yeah, I know him,” Guy finally says, and the hand that was resting below the countertop is brought up into view. Lansky relaxes a little. “He’s one of Capone’s boys with Luciano.”

“That so?” It’s the same one that questioned Lansky initially, and Lansky swears that, if this goes south, he’ll be the first one shot. He’s fucking annoying. “He’s not Italian, is he? How’s he part of Capone’s gang?”

“Because I’m good at what I do,” Lansky forces out in a level tone. He taps one of his guns as a sort of threat as he walks closer to the group. “I need a word with Guy. In private.”

See, what most people didn’t know about Guy was that, despite being Italian, he was much like Lansky. As in, he, like Lansky, wasn’t Roman-Catholic like the rest of the bastards who worked in any of the Little Italys or in downtown. And, one Jewish man to one Muslim man, Lansky and Guy respected each other in name even if they very seldom had worked together.

So, it falls in line with what Lansky had hoped would happen when Guy nods and gestures to a table by the wall. “Take a seat.”

Lansky takes the seat : ignores the four men who are still watching him with unease. Lansky has no clue who they are or even what family they’re a part of. If they’re talking business with Guy at six in the morning with an unlocked door, Lansky can only assume they’re some of the sloppiest workers in Chicago.

Guy takes the seat across from him and slides a glass of water to Lansky. “What are you doing in the city?” is what Guy greets him with, and Lansky can’t blame the man.

“I’m here to get Luciano back.”

Guy raises an eyebrow, which is the most expression Lansky thinks he’s ever seen from him. “I’m sorry,” Guy says, “you’re here to do what exactly?”

“I’m here to find the men that bagged Luciano.”

Guy blinks slowly and takes a sip of his water. “When did this happen?”

“Midnight today.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Guy seems to think real hard about something, and Lansky gives him time. In the meanwhile, he drinks some of the water. He’s not sure how much time he’ll have to spend getting meals the next few days, and he might as well accept a little hospitality from an old colleague.

“Well,” Guy finally says. “I wouldn’t know where to start.”

“Lucky for me, I do,” Lansky replies dryly. “I need to know where Kuni’s been hanging out lately, and with who.”

Guy frowns. “I’m not just selling you the kid’s location, Lansky. He’s made it into Capone’s good books ever since he helped us catch Mr. Nelson off the street two months ago. If I give you his location, I’m in trouble with the boss.”

“Kuni and I get along fine. He’s in no trouble with me.”

“Really?”

“The kid’s Jewish, Guy. I kept the Italians off his back for all his teenage years.” Lansky thinks about it and remembers that Guy’s still Italian, even if he’s not as bad as the rest of them. “No offense, I mean.”

Guy doesn’t seem amused. “None taken.”

“If you don’t want to give me his location, give me someone to call. I can make other people talk.”

“You think that makes this deal any better for me?”

“Either you give me his location or I’ll go get it myself.” Lansky’s getting irritated now. “You owe Luciano for that time he saved your ass from that deal gone south.”

“Yes, and it was Luciano that I owe the debt to. Not you.”

“Luciano and I are the same person, as far as anyone in this town is concerned,” Lansky leans across the table as he says it, and there’s a flicker of something in Guy’s expression before the man turns away.

“Kuni’s been running around university lately,” Guy relents. “After some student group there that has ties to big money with Chicago bank. Apparently, some students have their hands on coke and moonshine : neither of which they’re getting from our circles. Capone wants us to shut down whatever this underground exchange ring is, and bring the kids and their parents into business with us instead.”

“I didn’t ask what Capone’s up to.” Lansky stands up from the table. “The information better be correct.”

“I don’t sell false information.”

“Good. What time should I find Kuni around campus?”

Guy hesitates. “It would be better to wait until noon.”

“Why’s that?”

“Kuni’s been talking business with a lot of big shots in the mornings and evenings lately. You don’t want anyone who knows you seeing you back here.”

Lansky considers this bit of information. “Who’s looking for me?”

Guy shakes his head, and Lansky decides he doesn’t need to push for this. He knows where Kuni will be, and that’s enough. He puts his hat back on, and Guy stands up, too. Lansky puts his coat on – an expensive fur coat that both he and Guy know used to be Luciano’s.

“Thanks, Guy,” Lansky says, heading for the door.

“Stay safe on the streets.”

Lansky exits the pizzeria, unsettled by how many warnings Guy is trying to drop. Someone is out for him, and Guy knows who it is. And if Guy knows who it is, there’s a safe bet that Kuni does, too.

At least, Kuni’s always looked up to him as some sort of role model. Lansky’s not sure why exactly the kid latched onto him so tightly – if it’s the protection he gave from the Italians or if it’s the mutual bond in being two of the only Jewish men running around with Capone’s guys – but he can trust the kid to be honest with him for this. He heads to his car and starts up the engine. He’ll park somewhere near Vernon Park and pass the time in the car until the sun gets higher in the sky.

And in the hours that pass, he drifts in and out of restless sleep. Sure, the blinding light of the morning sun isn’t making it easy to nap, but the real thing that’s bothering Lansky is how many buildings he’s already driven past since getting to Chicago and how many of them could have easily been the building where they’re keeping Luciano. Man-hunting is never a fun endeavor for that very reason.

He wakes from a particularly bad nightmare to find his watch reading that it’s already a few minutes away from noon. So, with a grunt of pain as he moves his shoulder for the first time in a few hours, he gets out of the car and slams the door shut.

Lansky decides to buy a bit of bread from a nearby bakery – German because he’d be damned to speak with another Italian when he doesn’t have to – and wait for Kuni to pick up on the fact that he’s here as he feeds the pigeons on campus. He doesn’t have to wait long, either. Within a half hour, a cloaked and low-hatted figure walks behind him.

“Meet me at Lucy’s in thirty minutes.”

Lansky would recognize Kuni’s voice – still young and relatively high-pitched – anywhere. He makes no motion to show that he’s heard anything, and Kuni walks away without another word. Once the boy’s gone, Lansky looks up from the birds and scans the campus. He doesn’t see anyone watching, but he supposes that Kuni knows better than him the hiding spots for surveillance here.

He waits ten minutes before he walks back to the car. Lucy’s is back on the other side of the Ike again : an expensive and smoky Italian restaurant along the lakeside whose owner was close with Old Lovino, at least, before Lansky shot Lovino in the back of the head as per Dewey’s request a year ago. It's also one of the restaurants where the cops let the alcohol slide in favor of catching more lucrative criminals amongst the patrons. Lansky wonders if he’s walking right into trouble, but he’ll trust Kuni with this.

When he walks into the lobby of the restaurant, the hostess immediately spots him and gestures to the bouncers to collect him. Lansky’s escorted – with a well-concealed gun pointed into his ribs – to a table in the back of the restaurant where Kuni sits in a nice suit that, a year ago, he would have never been able to afford.

Lansky takes his seat.

“It’s good to see you,” Kuni smiles earnestly at him, as if there aren’t two bouncers at Lansky’s back still with their guns in their hands. The kid’s changed a good bit. “I was worried I’d never see you again after you left town.”

“I’m here for Luciano,” Lansky tells him, though by now he’s sure that Kuni already knows.

And Kuni does know, if the way he scowls at the response and sits back in his seat is any indicator. They’re interrupted by a waitress delivering to their table a bottle of white wine. She starts pouring two glasses, and Lansky reaches out a hand.

“Just one glass,” he tells her. “He’s still only twenty.”

“Hey!” Kuni protests, but the woman looks Lansky up and down before doing as he says and leaving with a sweet smile.

Lansky picks up his glass and takes a sip. It’s bitter more than it is dry, and he knows Luciano would hate this bottle if he were here to taste it.

“You shouldn’t be drinking at these sorts of establishments,” Lansky chides him. “Cops are looking for any opportunity to bring us into custody. If they see an underage drinking, they’ll jump on that like you can’t imagine. And you know what Capone would do to you if you let yourself get taken down to the station.”

Kuni grumbles to himself, and Lansky feels a long-forgotten affection for the kid warm up his chest. So, the kid hasn’t changed nearly as much as he thought.

“I don’t get why you’re still looking after Luciano,” Kuni complains. “That bastard’s never been nice to you, anyhow. You remember that one time with the Hilton he got you caught out of your share of the money because he lied about you screwing up during the siege?”

Lansky does remember that, and he doesn’t have fond memories of the fight that ensued between the two of them afterwards. “Luciano’s plenty nice to me now,” he says simply. With the two men behind him, it’s not like he can say any more than that.

Kuni still doesn’t seem convinced. “Just let them kill him.”

“I can’t do that, Kuni.”

“Why not? It would save everyone a lot of bitching. He’s so loud.”

“You aren’t the one having to listen to him anymore.”

“So, you did run off together,” Kuni accuses.

Lansky lowers the wine glass from his lips and sets it down on the table. He’s not sure how much Kuni’s heard about what exactly went down eight months ago, and he’s not sure how many rumors have spread about him and Luciano in the months since they’ve left.

“We live together to split costs.”

Kuni eyes him. “You hated him.”

“I do not hate Luciano.”

There’s a long pause. Then, Kuni sighs. “You’re not going to get to him, either way.”

“You don’t know that.” Lansky isn’t afraid to go in guns blazing as Luciano had done alongside him many a time. He doesn’t care how many men he has to kill before he gets what he needs.

“I wanna help you, Lansky. But I can’t right now. You’re not the one that Capone wants, and boss's already not going to be happy that I’m talking with you.”

“You owe me,” Lansky tries to argue. “I kept you safe for years. You have to help me now, kid. It’s how that sort of honor system works.”

“I’m sorry, Lansky. But the laws of Italian mafia come first if I want to stay alive.”

 _Fuck these Italians_ , Lansky wants to break something. He can’t believe he damn well married one. He stands up and shakes his arms free as soon as the bouncers try to grab him.

“Fine,” he growls. “I’ll do it the hard way. And when Capone gets to you, you make sure to tell him that I’m coming for Luciano no matter how many men he tries to put between me and him.”

Kuni frowns and starts to say something, but Lansky takes his leave. He has no interest in hearing what old allies have to say anymore. He was right when he told Benjamin it would be difficult. _‘_ _Little help,_ _’_ he scoffs. There was no help to be had at all.

He storms out of the establishment and heads back to the car.

If he’s going to do this the hard way, then he has a long list of stops to make. He’ll hold up city hall and get some names and locations there, and then he’ll make his way as he goes. Hopefully, the man who signs off on bank papers for Capone is still rooming in the marital suite of Sofitel. There, he can steal some papers, see who comes after him. If he can catch some of Capone’s men, he can torture them until they start spilling.

First, though, he turns on the car engine. First, he’s going to make a stop at Lady Pompeii.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me, writing lansky : "and i will pepper in the fact that he hates italian mobsters for being anti-semitic"


	3. passata sono il solo che piango i defunti

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hgjdhjkddjk i'm so sorry guys i promise things get better and happier after this. but it can't be a hurt/comfort fic without a good amount of hurt. next chapter, luciano and lansky will reunite, and they'll talk through a lot of what's happened (and there will be side chikaita, too)
> 
> tw // homophobia (not subtle in this one)  
> tw // anti-semitism (also not subtle in this one)  
> tw // torture (hands only)  
> tw // sex work (no graphic depictions)

Luciano doesn’t see anything when he comes to. The cheat cotton fabric of the bag over his head is damn near suffocating him with how hot it is, and the heat of wherever the hell he is isn’t helping to alleviate that. He tries moving and realizes that the bastards have tied him down to a shitty old chair.

“Fuck,” he spits out.

He’s shaking his head roughly to try and wrestle the bag off his head when a voice makes him freeze.

“You might as well stop trying now. If someone has to make you stop, I can guarantee that you won’t enjoy it.”

Luciano knows that voice. He sits still a minute, trying to figure out who it is. And, then, it hits him.

“Amadeo,” he growls and strains against the ties on his wrists. “You bastard. What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

“Isn’t that obvious?”

The bag is wrenched off of his head, and a good bit of his hair goes with it. Luciano bites back the howl of pain and spits onto the floor. He glares at the grunt who tore off the covering and continues to struggle. They’re going to pay for that.

“Oh, stop moving already,” Amadeo snaps.

Luciano whips his head around and takes in the sight of Amadeo sitting on his late father’s oaken desk. That certainly answers Luciano’s question as to his whereabouts. Old Lovino’s place was in the penthouse of the apartment building right across from the Sofitel and beside the dirty cinema. And if they’ve taken them here instead of some run-down hotel room, then all of this is for business and not some shitty bag-and-question.

“What the fuck do you want with me?”

“I don’t want anything from you, so to say. And I won’t have to bleed what I do want out of you, either, if you just cooperate.”

“Yeah, runt? You’re eight years younger than me and in the gang I used to boss around. You’ve no authority over me.”

Amadeo clicks his tongue against his teeth in annoyance. “You seem to have forgotten that you left – voluntarily, I might add – Capone’s service and, thus, all of his protections. I get to do whatever I want now.”

“Bullshit.”

The grunt that snatched the bag off of Luciano’s head socks him the jaw at that, and Luciano’s head spins from the force behind it. He hasn’t gotten socked square in the jaw since the last time he and Lansky fought way back in the beginning of their partnership. And that time, he had fucking deserved it.

“I’m going to ask you this once. Where is Meyer Lansky?”

“Wouldn’t you like to fucking know.”

The second punch comes even harder somehow, and the chair topples over, taking Luciano with it. Luciano groans as his head bangs against the floor. Two of the bastards pull their chair back upright and, as Luciano’s head swings forwards from the movement, the fist comes back into his nose again.

Luciano swears he hears the snap of his nose breaking. He howls and tries to bring his hands up to cradle his face, but they’re still tightly strung to the arms of the chair. He lowers his head down to protect it. Blood drips onto his pants.

“Fuck,” he gasps. “Holy fucking shit. You broke my fucking nose.”

“We’ll do worse.”

“I’ll fucking kill you!” Luciano roars.

He can feel the old chair’s parts straining along with all of his pulling, and he thinks he might actually have a chance of breaking the rickety thing. Before the guy can lobby another punch at him, Luciano thrusts his arms forward and, with the satisfying snap of the arms tearing free of the backrest, lunges for the man.

He gets the man’s gun out of its holster and pops it right under the bastard’s jaw. He pulls the trigger and doesn’t hesitate to spin his aim over to Amadeo, who has leapt off the desk in shock. Something heavy hits Luciano in the back of the head and, collapsing as his vision fades, he pulls the trigger twice.

The next time he comes to, he’s tied to a much bigger and sturdier chair, and there are ropes around his chest that weren’t there before. The man’s body is still on the floor – jaw shot straight off – oozing blood and staining the surely expensive carpet. Luciano sucks up a wad of saliva and blood in his mouth and spits.

He apparently missed both shots at Amadeo, he realizes with sore disappointment. Two bullet holes are lodged into the desk, but Amadeo is standing beside it unarmed. The kid looks furious, and Luciano would like him to untie him so they can settle this is a simple fistfight : a fight that he knows he’d win. And Amadeo knows this, too, otherwise he wouldn’t have so many men in the room with him for this interrogation.

“Whoops,” Luciano sneers. “It looks like you lost a guy.”

Amadeo’s face scrunches up. “You’ll be next if you don’t cooperate,” he threatens.

“Yeah, right. You can’t even break my nose without getting one of your grunts killed. What do you think’s going to happen when you try to do more? You’re a dead man, Amadeo.”

Amadeo turns away from him. Luciano’s infuriated. _How dare this fucking kid turn his back on him?_

“Did you not fucking hear me? You’re fucking dead.”

Amadeo picks up something silver from the desk, and Luciano narrows his eyes. He stills in his chair. It’s a silver nutcracker : the kind you break men’s fingers with when they aren’t telling you the truth. He wants to scoff. There’s no way this nineteen-year-old is going to get information out of him with that. He’d be insane.

Amadeo turns around and approaches Luciano’s chair. Luciano eyes the kid’s expression. _Shit_. The kid is absolutely going to use that on him.

When Amadeo slaps him, he slaps him hard and with nail. Luciano scrunches his eyes shut, but it doesn’t stop Amadeo’s nails from raking across his face hard enough to draw blood. It burns, and Luciano hisses between his teeth. He opens his eyes again, and he has to admit that he’s never actually been this helpless before in his life.

Sure, he had been beaten on the streets as a runt, but that came with the territory. It was his choice to stay and continue getting kicked than run, after all. It’s what got him up the ranks so quick with Capone’s favor. But this, as an adult, is new. He wonders if this is how some of the other big shots had felt when he had done similar things to them with Lansky by his side.

“What the fuck do you want?” he demands.

“I already asked. I said I’d only ask it once.”

“Maybe I forgot it when your men damn near concussed me.”

“That would be unfortunate,” Amadeo agrees. He lowers the nutcracker to Luciano’s left hand and seems to enjoy the squirm Luciano does in the chair to get away. “When you remember, let me know.”

The nutcracker hits Luciano’s knuckles, and the heaviness of the metal feels just the same as a hammer would. Luciano shouts and then curses furiously.

“What the fuck are you gonna do to me, huh?”

Amadeo socks him in the jaw. He doesn’t even give Luciano the chance to shake his head and get the pain away before he hisses into Luciano’s face. “I’m going to break every last damn one of your fingers until you tell me what I want to know.”

“You’re not fucking getting it,” Luciano hisses back. “I’m not playing your fucking game, kid.”

“How long do you think you can last? Really? Maybe a few knuckles? You think you might even last up to a few fingers? It’s two knuckles a finger. If you talk after three fingers, that’s still six times I’ll crush your bones into powder.”

“I’ll never talk,” Luciano swears.

“Twenty knuckles,” Amadeo croons at him. “You think you can handle that kind of blow to your pride?” Luciano glares at him. “There’s a bolt cutter on my desk, too. If breaking your knuckles doesn’t do it, I’ll cut them off joint by joint. Three joints a finger, Luciano. Oh, except for the thumb.”

“Fuck you.”

“You think you can take it?”

“Fuck you!” Luciano spits into his face.

Amadeo slips the nutcracker around the first knuckle of Luciano’s left pinky finger and, prying the digit still against all of Luciano’s squirming, crushes down with the nutcracker.

Luciano’s vision goes white with pain and he hears himself scream, but all he can feel is the unbearable pressure on the spot where his bones had once been neatly connected. Coming down after Amadeo releases, stars swim in his vision.

“Fuck,” Luciano gasps. “You broke my fucking finger! You broke my fucking nose and my fucking finger!”

Amadeo slips the nutcracker higher – to the second knuckle – and repeats. Luciano screams.

“Are you going to tell me?”

“Never,” Luciano swears. He feels the tears welling up in his eyes, and he curses himself for being so weak to this kind of pain. If only he were more like Lansky- He stops that thought immediately.

“Bring me the pliers,” Amadeo orders.

One of the men behind Luciano moves, and there’s a few metallic clinks. Luciano suddenly realizes why the room is so damn hot. He grits his teeth and forces him to not make his situation worse by cursing Amadeo out. How _dare_ this kid heat a pair of pliers in the fireplace before even talking to him?

Amadeo accepts the fire-hot pliers from his man and brings it to the fingertip of Luciano’s pinky finger. Luciano struggles in his seat, kicking out against the legs of the chair, but it’s not budging.

“You’re not going to fucking denail me,” Luciano snaps. With his finger so badly broken, he can’t move it even the slightest bit away from the tool.

“You better believe I am.”

Luciano’s never had to denail someone in his life, and he didn’t know it took this long to rip the damn thing off. That or Amadeo’s stretching this out. He’s not ashamed of how loud he screams through it all, and he’s not fucking ashamed of the wretched gasps of pain he breathes once it’s over. The exposed skin fucking burns, and blood is oozing from the wound.

“You fucking bastard!” he screams.

Amadeo slips the nutcracker to the next finger : Luciano’s left ring finger. Luciano watches as Amadeo still and, then, in horror, struggles desperately as Amadeo goes for the silver band he has on the finger.

“Leave it alone,” Luciano yells. “Leave it the fuck alone! Goddammit! You fucking-!” Amadeo socks him again in the jaw, and the growing bruise there only worsens the pain. His jaw feels dangerously close to dislocating.

Amadeo wrestles the ring off of his finger and holds it up, curling his lip derisively. He holds it out in front of Luciano’s face, and one of the grunts behind the chair holds Luciano’s head still to prevent him from biting, as he’s known to do.

“What is this?” Amadeo asks in a fake light tone of voice.

“Put it back.”

“I asked what it was.”

Luciano glares at him, chest heaving with his breaths. He refuses to say a word.

“Don’t tell me,” Amadeo starts cracking up. “Oh my god! Don’t tell me that fucking worthless sack of shit _proposed_ to you! Holy shit!” He cackles even harder, and Luciano sits still in red-hot shame. “I always knew there was something fucked up about that Jew. Oh my god! He’s a goddamn homosexual?”

“Don’t you fucking talk about him that way,” Luciano growls deep in his throat. “You do whatever you fucking want to me, but don’t you dare fucking talk about him like that.”

“I’ll talk about that fucking shit stain however I like,” Amadeo sneers in Luciano’s face. He pulls away and scrutinizes the ring. “What the fuck is this shit? Oh my god, did he think he was going to make you his wife?”

“I’m no one’s fucking wife.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, did that offend you? All of you pansies are so womanly anyway. No fucking backbone.”

“How about we switch places and find out who really lacks a backbone?”

Amadeo’s fist closes over the handles of the nutcracker. “What fucking happened to you, Luciano? You used to fuck three dolls a day. What? Did you lose all of your spine as soon as he got his dick in you?”

“Shut the fuck up,” Luciano hisses. The tears in his eyes are a different kind than the ones that had pricked up in pain earlier. He refuses to cry in front of these men.

Amadeo throws the ring into the fire, and Luciano feels his soul leave his body.

“Oi,” he says, and he hates how his voice cracks. “Give, give that back. Put it back, you bastard!”

Amadeo crushes down on his ring finger before he can continue, and Luciano chokes. He coughs for air, but the second knuckle is smashed just as quickly, and Luciano only chokes further. He coughs up spittle and isn’t even lucid enough to aim for Amadeo as he dispels it.

“I’m going to ask this one more fucking time,” Amadeo moves onto Luciano’s middle finger. “My men weren’t able to get Lansky when they ransacked your cozy little cottage in Ottawa. So, Luciano, tell me. Where the fuck is Lansky now?”

Honestly, Luciano has no fucking idea where Lansky is. He prays to God that Lansky and Benjamin are already halfway to New York. But he’s not about to tell Amadeo that. He’s not about to tell Amadeo a single thing.

He leans in. “In your sister’s bed.”

He doesn’t even scream when Amadeo slams the nutcracker down. He grits his teeth, but doesn’t give the others the pleasure. The nutcracker slides up. It takes until Amadeo to move the nutcracker over to Luciano’s right hand that Luciano speaks.

“What do you want with Lansky?”

“As if you don’t know.”

The nutcracker comes down, and Luciano hisses. “No I don’t fucking know.” He’s getting used to the pain. Maybe, Amadeo will give up. Whatever Amadeo wants with Lansky, he’s already waited nine months. It can’t be that important.

“Your fucking fairy killed my father.”

Luciano blinks. For a moment, he doesn’t register anything in the room. There’s no way that the man who killed Old Lovino was Lansky. He and Lansky had been on a job that night down by the waterfront. Except, now that Luciano really thought about it, Lansky had gone out to get them drinks and had returned extremely late with an excuse about the traffic getting clogged up around the Roosevelt.

 _Holy shit_. _Lansky killed Old Man Lovino_.

Luciano’s not sure what to do with this revelation. He sits, stunned, and Amadeo is letting it hit him as he waits to continue business.

Lovino had practically been Luciano’s father growing up. While Luciano’s real father sat in their dingy home on southside without any money to his name and a crippling addiction to alcohol, Lovino had shown Luciano the ropes of proper business – none of the ‘riffraff’ that Luciano had been partaking in on the streets – and had put in good word for him with Capone.

Everyone loved Lovino. The man was like that with all the kids, so long as they were good, Italian kids. And the man had loved his son as much as he had loved his late wife. Amadeo had been spoiled good under Lovino.

And now, Luciano realizes, he can’t hold any of this against Amadeo. Mafia law is most crucial when concerning true familial relationships – blood over anything else – and even more crucially is the strict rule that no family takes out the father or son of an ally’s family. So, Lansky, working under Capone at the time, had absolutely no right to go and kill Old Lovino, Capone’s most-loved ally.

He knows Lansky did it for Dewey. He knows Lansky did it for Benjamin. And suddenly, he can’t blame anyone for the situation that he’s in now. By all rights, he should tell Amadeo this very second everything he knows about Lansky. His honor almost compels him to.

But he knows more of Lansky than just the man who breaks the laws of mafia and takes any damn job he can.

“I need a smoke,” is all Luciano can manage.

Amadeo studies him. “You really didn’t know.”

“Of course not,” Luciano rasps. “Of course he didn’t tell me.”

Amadeo doesn’t get him the smoke, doesn’t loosen even just his crippled hand for Luciano to press his face into. But he doesn’t touch Luciano any more, either. Amadeo brings a chair up in front of Luciano and takes a seat.

“So. Where is Lansky?”

“Amadeo.” Luciano gives him a pained look. “That’s,” he bites his lip. “God help me. Oh, God help me.”

Amadeo does nothing more than wait.

“I loved Old Lovino, too. The man did a lot for me. For Capone. For all of us. Lansky had no right to do what he did.” Luciano licks his lips. “But, God. You’re asking me to hand you over his address so you can walk in and put a gun to his head and pull the trigger. You know I can’t do that.”

Something ugly snaps in Amadeo’s eyes.

“You can do whatever you want to me,” Luciano sighs. He knows he’s signing off on his life with this, but there isn’t much else he can say. “But I can’t give you that.”

Amadeo stands out of his chair and kicks it back behind him. “Then, we’re continuing with where we left off.”

Lansky walks out of the dim brothel and into the blinding sunlight of the street. So far, he has eight dead men to his name in this trip alone to Chicago, and he’s only just hit the second place on his list. Seven bodies in this joint. Only the boss in the last. He lifts a cigarette to his mouth – courtesy of this place’s boss’s desk drawers – and lights it without hurry. He breathes in slowly and exhales the smoke even slower.

The next place he intends to hit is Capone’s personal finance puppet up in the marital suite of the Sofitel. He’s put it after the priest and after the brothel owner only because he wants there to be a little stir around town about him before he goes after the big targets. If he can manage to get Mr. Di Aosto, then he’ll be a threat that Capone won’t be able to ignore. And, then, he can torture whoever’s sent after him until he gets what he needs.

He sets off towards the car. It’s three in the afternoon now. Fifteen whole hours since he and Luciano were separated in their own home. If Lansky doesn’t get him back before twenty-four hours have passed, he doesn’t know how he’ll forgive himself.

Because the traditional way of dealing business is that, once you’ve taken someone, you give them a day for them to give you what you want (names, locations, anything) before you start to force it out. And if someone wants him dead, then the wait period is going to be much shorter for Luciano. _If it hasn_ _’_ _t already ended_ , Lansky thinks darkly.

At least, he’s narrowed some things down. It’s not Juliano’s group that pulled this stunt, and it’s not Noretti. Lansky thinks about how many enemies he’s made in this town and spits onto the sidewalk.

He walks all the way to the Sofeti rather than take the car mostly because he’d like to draw as much attention to himself as he can. In a way, he feels like he’s reliving Luciano’s old career with the flashy fur coat, cigarette, and careless strolls he’s taking between buildings. He spots one of Capone’s lackeys by the corner and makes eye contact with the man.

He gets to the Sofeti and recognizes immediately the two bodyguards standing at the elevator he needs to take to reach Di Aosto.

“Lansky,” Regina greets him, and the barbed spite of the man’s tongue hasn’t changed in the slightest since Lansky last saw him. “I’m afraid you’re not going up.”

“The hell I’m not.”

“He means it, Lansky.” Teodoro doesn’t look pleased to see him, but his expression isn’t hostile either. “Go home.”

“I don’t have a home anymore.”

Regina and Teodoro share a look.

“What do you mean you don’t have a home?” Regina questions.

“I lost my home the moment you bastards took Luciano. And I’m here to get him back. No matter what.”

Teodoro sighs like he’s seen too much, and Lansky thinks the man should shut his trap before he says something that will make Lansky angry. “Look,” Teodoro leans in. “All of town’s heard what happened. And we’re sorry. But Capone didn’t take Luciano, and none of what you’re about to do here is going to change that.”

“I’ve figured that much out,” Lansky replies. “But you do know where Luciano is. And you won’t tell me. So I’ll have Capone send some men after me, and I’ll get the answer out of them. By force. Now let me up.”

“We can’t do that,” Regina snaps.

“And why is that?”

“Di Aosto has been moved to the Hilton, and you’re never going to get through the security we’ve put up over there.”

Lansky eyes them. He _is_ getting angry. “You expect me to believe that?”

“Kuni put in good word for you,” Teodoro continues to try to persuade him. “The kid wanted to help you get out of this hole you’ve dug yourself.”

“Think, Lansky,” Regina steps forwards. “You’ve killed how many of Capone’s associates by now?”

Lansky curls his lip. “Apparently not enough.” He spits onto Teodoro’s shoe and storms back out of the building.

Outside, he looks up at the sky and thinks about what to do next. There’s always another brothel that he can hit up, but he’s not feeling particularly enthusiastic about entering another sex den full of naked women. Then again, it’s not like he can storm the Hilton, either. So, he turns his feet towards the crosswalk and crosses the street to _Il Micino_.

It’s not a block he likes to be on, ever since Dewey blackmailed him into killing Old Lovino (who even Lansky liked but would never aloud admit). So, going back inside where he doesn’t have to see the old building is a relief. If only it was anything but this.

He’s never been fond of the female body. In fact, he’s more than a little disgusted by it. He’s never had to speak with women much, either, and he’s never endeavored to really learn how. He’s vaguely aware that Luciano and all the other Italians think there’s some inherent difference in how you speak to a woman versus a man, but Lansky doesn’t get it. All that he understands is that he’s never been interested and, quite frankly, would rather stay away than get caught up in the mess that women seem to bring to mafia members.

After all, Luciano got socked the one time he had taken Sal’s girl to bed.

The interior of the establishment is smoky from a mixture of quite literally most drugs that could be readily found in Chicago, though Lansky’s willing to bet that the majority of this was opium. A few poles are scattered here and there, and the women are all still half-dressed as they swing around slowly doing dances to the jazz music that is blasting over the sounds of sex that are surely coming from the side rooms.

He brushes the bouncer off and heads for the back room where he knows the owner – Folger – has his office. Except he doesn’t get there.

One of the women in only her undergarments takes ahold of his arm in what he assumes is supposed to be a seductive grip with her face so close to his and half of her body melded against his side.

“First time here?” she asks.

Lansky tries to step away, but he’s almost amazed by how sticky her grip seems to be. She barely dislodges from him. “I’m not here for you,” he grumbles. “I’m here for your boss. Now, let me go.”

“Hmm,” she hums and leans in closer. He’s about to shove her off when her breath tickles his ear and she whispers, “I know you’re here for Luciano.”

He feels the world stand still at that. Who does this poor girl service in order to catch wind of such information, let alone know who he is and who Luciano is? It hasn’t even been a whole damn day, and even the prostitutes know what’s going on.

He lets her pull him into one of the side rooms, lets her push him onto the bed as she shuts the door and flips the sign to read ‘Occupied.’ Lansky’s not sure what to expect. He’s a little disgusted that he’s sitting on a bed where some stranger probably got off not even fifteen minutes prior.

“We don’t have much time,” she says in a rush, moving over to the bed. Lansky flinches as she nears him, and she notices and seems to take pity because she slows down a good bit. “You don’t know who I am, do you?”

Lansky can’t imagine why he would know a prostitute. “Um,” he says intelligently. “Should I?”

“My name’s Anamaria. But Luciano probably called me Annie when he spoke of me.”

Lansky squints hard as he thinks. He doesn’t remember Luciano talking his ear off about any Annie who he’d- _Oh_ , Lansky remembers. He tries really, really hard not to hold it against her when he lifts his head and admits, “Yeah, I know you.”

Meanwhile, his hands are fisting into his pants. He absolutely knows ‘Annie.’ She’s the girl who Luciano had come to service him while he and Lansky were holed up in one of the shitty hotels on southside, staking out to find out which gang the butcher’s shop down there was two-timing Capone with. And Luciano had known damn well back then exactly how Lansky felt about the matter and had proceeded to flaunt it the entire time just to piss him off : and, then, wouldn’t shut up about her and all the gifts he had been buying her for weeks after the fact.

“Lucy came to me a few nights before you left town to tell me what had happened between you two and apologize for calling on me so often to make you jealous.”

“It’s in the past,” Lansky says because he really doesn’t want to linger on the topic. If he does, he may not go and get Luciano back at all because, yes, he’s still pissed about it.

Anamaria nods shortly, looking more than awkward herself, before she sits down on the bed beside him. “I had a customer earlier this afternoon who went in to speak with the boss after his session. I went back out to wait for him, since we have a strict policy here to see our customers to the door. But I overhead him talking really angrily to Mr. Linetti. And he said that they, I’m assuming his family, had Luciano and had to keep it a secret from Capone’s men.”

That does not make a single bit of sense to Lansky, but he supposes he’s in no place to question what the standard procedure of conduct is for men who come to brothels for the women.

“Do you know his name?”

“Told me to call him Mr. Malley.”

Lansky bolts to his feet. Anamaria startles at the movement and flinches away from him, and he feels equal parts sorry that she’s used enough to rough treatment to know when to flinch and that he’s intimidating enough to make her think he’d do her any harm. But he _knows_ exactly which man in this town goes by the fake name Malley, and he’s an easy man to catch.

“That helps,” he tells her. “Thank you.”

She nods a little and rubs her feet together. He eyes the heels she’s been forced into and frowns.

“Can I help you get out of here?”

“Huh?”

“This place. You didn’t willingly join this place, did you?”

She hums. “Oh, I do hate it quite a bit here. But there are benefits, too. I don’t mind this line of work if it gets me free rent and free food. Plus, I get to send a little money home each month to my brothers.”

“Are… you sure?” He cannot begin to understand her line of thinking.

“Positive.”

Lansky wonders if what Luciano had once said about the women in these places was true : that they’re all making their own power and pride against whatever their pimp has them do. He nods.

“Alright.” Now, it’s getting awkward, and he’s realizing how much he’d like to leave before he says something that Anamaria might take offense to.

“You talk real different from Lucy, you know that?”

“… Do I?”

“Oh, definitely,” she says. “He’s all ‘darling’ and ‘kitty’ and every other endearment under the sun. Thinks it makes him real dashing, too. Does he talk that way with you?”

Lansky doesn’t know what to say. Luciano’s definitely never called him ‘kitty’ or ‘darling’ : probably because he knows that Lansky’s not afraid to sock him if he gets pissed off enough. But there’s still the frequent ‘honey’ and ‘Meyer’ and ‘handsome’ that Luciano purrs into his ear if the night is late enough and they’re in the right mood.

“Um,” Lansky manages. “I guess.”

“Huh.” She seems to think on this. “He said that being with a man’s real different, you know, but I still don’t think I fully get it.”

“… Did he?”

She hums. “I don’t know. Ever since he said that, I’ve been thinking, you know, that it might be nice to try out kissing and a little touching with another girl to see how it felt. If it was… different, like he said.”

“Oh. Um. Good luck?”

She laughs a little at that, and Lansky hopes he didn’t say the wrong thing. “You’ve absolutely no interest in women, do you?”

“None.”

“That’s nice. Refreshing, actually.” Lansky nods stiffly. “I hope you find Luciano,” her tone goes a little more serious. “He’s a real sweet guy when he wants to be, and I think he was real happy about running off to the country with you.”

“Ah.” He’s still a little bewildered that Luciano liked Annie enough to tell her about their relationship. “Thanks,” he says again, and he means it. If this lead pulls off, he might get to Luciano by midnight.

Anamaria hops off the bed and goes to the door, opening it and flipping the sign. This time, when she presses close and tucks her hand into his waistband, he lets her without moving away. She leads him to the entrance and presses a kiss to his cheek, which he honestly wished she hadn’t done.

He turns to the bouncer with a scowl. He leans in close, one hand on his gun, and says lowly, “If you get her in trouble for this, I’ll hear about it eventually. And I will not be happy.”

The bouncer must have a clue about just who is threatening him because he nods quickly and keeps his chin down.

Lansky steps onto the street outside and sighs.

A hand falls on his shoulder. Without even thinking about it, Lansky flips the man onto the concrete and pulls a gun on him. The only thing that stops him from pulling the trigger is the familiar green-tinted brown hair and the huge, circular glasses that no one else except this guy would wear.

Cecilio meets his eyes coolly for someone who was just thrown to the ground. “I hear you’ve been trailing dead bodies after you ever since you came to town this morning.”

Lansky can’t believe his luck. Any one of Capone’s men would have been better to negotiate with than this creep. He doesn’t think he’s ever gotten along so poorly with someone. Sure, Luciano had pissed him off a shit ton in the early days, but Luciano had never come nearly as close to the anti-Semitism that Cecilio reeked.

“What’s it to you?”

Cecilio huffs and picks himself off the street. He has the audacity to brush off his fine suede jacket in front of Lansky before he answers. “There are certain people who would like to talk to you.”

“You taking me to Capone?”

“No,” Cecilio answers. “Matteo and I thought we’d like to have a chat with you in the public library.”

Lansky considers his options. Matteo is an old friend of Luciano’s and closer to Luciano than anyone else Lansky could hope to talk to. Maybe the best move is to stop going after people who Lansky can expect things from and instead go after the people that Luciano could expect things from.

“Fine,” he accepts and holsters his gun.

Cecilio smiles, and Lansky curls his lip in response. “Of course. Follow me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *chanting* wlw/mlm solidarity
> 
> Regina -- Yuki  
> Teodoro -- Tenma


	4. mi imprigioni, o insonnia

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the side chikaita begins (they're lowkey becoming my comfort characters in this fic). lansky gets luciano back.
> 
> tw // mentions of disfiguration/torture (hands and face)  
> tw // mentions of period-typical homophobia  
> tw // cecilio's anti-semitism (one line)

The library that Cecilio drives Lansky to is barely ten minutes away : up in the old part of town where the tourists like to walk around the department stores. Lansky can’t say he’s ever been inside the building. On the occasions that Benjamin had asked for stacks of books to read while stuck in his hospital bed, Lansky had gone to the more local library up by East Village.

He’s not thrilled with the location, but it’ll do. He’s not exactly in a position to argue.

Cecilio, wisely, keeps silent throughout the length of the drive. Lansky’s keeping his gun in his lap just in case Cecilio takes a wrong turn. So far, though, there’s been no need for it.

The neighborhoods haven’t changed much since Lansky and Luciano left the city. There’s a few new restaurants, a few new clubs, a few closed shops. But the streets look the same, and the fashions haven’t much changed. They pass the jeweler’s store where Lansky had bought the silver rings he and Luciano now wear, and the familiar sight gives him a tight feeling in his chest that he can’t afford to have right now.

They park on the street, and Cecilio forgoes the parking meter much like Lansky’s been doing this whole time. It irks Lansky a little : how similar Cecilio’s mannerisms are to his. He follows Cecilio up the steps and into the library.

It’s a lovely building on the inside with its high-vaulted ceilings and the intricate paintings of various half-clothed figures. The marble floors, too, are an extravagant detail. Luciano would like the sound of it echoing the clip of his heeled boots. That is, if Luciano would ever allow himself to enter a building of scholarly pursuit. The damn bastard had blown off half his compulsory education, and, in Lansky’s opinion, it really showed sometimes.

He’s led into the west wing and showed to the back of the room where the shelves begin and the long rows of tables end. Halfway through the room, Lansky already sees where they’re headed.

Matteo is a hard man to miss. He’s one of the few Italians who, like Luciano, had lighter hair, and, for whatever reason, seemed to enjoy dying the tips of his hair an even lighter color. That and the man wore the priciest suits that one can find in the entire city. Cashmere sweaters imported from overseas and wool suits from South America made him stand out against all of the other men hunched over at the tables, reading, in their tweed jackets and thin, cotton shirts.

Lansky takes the seat opposite Matteo before Cecilio indicates to him which seat he should take, and he hears the man scoff.

Matteo looks up from the book he’s reading – _The Lavender Lad_ by a man named Wyllarde - and marks his page neatly. He sets the book down halfway between him. Lansky can’t tell yet if the book is supposed to mean something to him, or Matteo is just catching after a hobby.

“Well,” Matteo hums. “Meyer Lansky.”

“Matteo Cimmino.”

“I didn’t think I’d ever see you again after you stole our Luciano away from us to the countryside.”

“I didn’t steal Luciano. He asked to come.” Well, it was more like Luciano had dropped hints for weeks that he wanted Lansky to propose to him something proper.

Little simpering looks here and there. Kisses too chaste and grips too tight during and after sex to just be the passion of the night. Questioning tones whenever their conversations dipped towards the topics of marriage, even if the marriages in question were that of their clients. Comments here and there about the countryside and how clean the air would be for Benjamin.

“I’ve a hard time believing that still,” Cecilio never fails to piss Lansky off. “Luciano’s too good for you in quite literally every way. I mean, what do you even have that could interest him?”

“Like you’re one to judge.”

“Excuse me? At least I’m not a-”

Matteo clears his throat suddenly, and Cecilio goes silent before he can finish the word.

Lansky snorts. “Looks like someone finally put a muzzle on you.”

“Why, you-”

“Cecilio, I told you to leave the questioning to me.”

Cecilio goes quiet and leans against the table behind Matteo’s chair. Lansky takes great pleasure in this.

“So, Lansky,” Matteo lights his pipe, though Lansky’s pretty sure smoking in a library is off-limits to avoid yellowing the books. “What brings you back to Chicago?”

“Don’t play dumb with me,” Lansky growls. “One of Capone’s allies has Luciano, and all of you bastards are afraid to tell me who.”

Matteo puffs a ring. “You must understand why no one is helping you.”

“You’re all fucking cowards.”

“No,” Matteo’s tone goes cold. “You can’t tell me you worked under Capone, and more especially alongside Luciano, without picking up a thing or two about mafia law. We don’t just kill who we like and fuck whatever girls we want. There’s a code to this, Lansky. You’ve broken it, and now no one will help you.”

“Fuck your Italian rules. You never bothered to translate them in the first place.”

“You haven’t picked up after any of what we say?”

“Like hell I’m learning your dirty language.”

A snort comes from Cecilio. “As if Hebrew’s any cleaner.”

Lansky kicks the table leg, and the entire thing shakes. A schoolgirl some chairs down throws him a dirty look. “Don’t speak to me like that.”

“Like what?”

“Cecilio!” Matteo snaps. “I told you to stay quiet.”

Cecilio goes silent again, glaring daggers at Lansky the meanwhile. Lansky sneers at him.

“I’m sorry about what’s happened, Lansky. I really am.” Matteo has the audacity to look sincere as he says this. Lansky wants to shoot him right there : public spectacle or not. “But I’m going to have to ask you to go home. Live in peace. And in exchange, we’ll protect you even out there.”

“Bullshit.”

“You can’t just continue this. You’ve killed eight men so far. Granted, we didn’t need any of them. But if you start going for the people who are important, who we can’t afford to lose, people are going to be sent after you.”

“I’m counting on it.”

Matteo sets his jaw, lowers his pipe down to the table, and sighs. He pulls out a silken handkerchief from one of his pockets and covers his eyes lightly. He twirls the pipe lightly. Lansky waits for Matteo to just say whatever he’s going to say instead of acting like some limp-wristed pansy at one of the all-male shows downtown.

“Maybe you don’t understand something,” Matteo sighs. He lowers the handkerchief. He looks exhausted, which startles Lansky somewhat. “You’re still alive right now because you have people in this city – friends – who are protecting you.”

Lansky sits mute. Fat joke he has anyone that could be called a friend what with how resolutely everyone has refused to help him so far.

“Some of us are protecting you just because Luciano likes you so much,” Matteo continues, “but there are others. Kuni practically came into Capone’s office begging on all fours to let you walk freely. Regina and Teodoro were posted at the Sofitel because they used to get along at least marginally with you. Guy gave you more than he should.”

“None of them offered help. They’re not worth calling friends.”

“I don’t think you’re getting it,” Matteo leans over the table with a pained expression. “You’ve been walking around, doing what you’re doing, because we’re protecting you against our better judgment just because we _like_ you, Lansky. We’re keeping quiet about where you are and what you’re doing from the people who are looking for you.”

Lansky is silent in his chair.

“If you keep going with this, you’re going to lose all of that protection. And Meyer,” Matteo shakes his head, “you’re not going to survive. You’re not going to be able to take Charlie home with you because you’ll be dead in the lake yourself.”

Lansky lowers his gaze to the table. He doesn’t even know what to think, but he’s still angry. He still wants to hold someone accountable for this. And he’s set on going back to Ottawa with Luciano, no matter what.

“The town’s changed a bit since you left,” Cecilio speaks. Lansky wishes he isn’t. “We all know about what happened with Dewey now. We know who was part of the hit list he made up for you to execute.”

“Dewey was ten months ago,” Lansky counters. “No one holds a grudge for that long in this city.”

“Some men do,” Cecilio says simply.

Lansky glances between the two of them suspiciously. They’re still not dropping names, but Lansky wonders if there isn’t something he can use against them.

“What do you know about Luciano and I after we left town?”

“Only the obvious,” Matteo smiles tiredly. “You two got hitched.” Lansky panics. Italians aren’t the sort of people you want knowing that sort of thing. “What more is there?”

“Hitched isn’t exactly the word for it,” Lansky remarks. “That’s for a woman and a man.”

“Is there any difference?”

“Are you calling me a woman?”

Matteo laughs. “Meyer, you and Luciano aren’t the only men in town to pursue other men.”

Lansky looks between Matteo and Cecilio. “So, that’s why you’re partnered up. You started fucking after Luciano and I left.”

“That’s not,” Matteo loses his composure. “We’re, it’s, that’s a rather crude way to put it, don’t you think? Things just happened as they did. We’re partners because Capone thought we were working well together on our co-jobs.”

“Well, then here’s an offer.”

Matteo nods. “Let’s hear it.”

“You tell me the name of the man who had Luciano,” Lansky says slowly, “and I don’t let loose the news that you two are in bed together.”

Matteo goes rigid with fear and manages to even drop the pipe from his hands. Cecilio throws his hands down on the table and leans into Lansky’s face, seething.

“Who the fuck do you think you are to make that kind of threat? We’re, at least, still interested in women.”

“Oh, I’m well aware,” Lansky smiles at the bastard. This feels better than he was hoping. “But, if what you say is true, then I’ve nothing to lose. Because I’m going after Luciano no matter what. But you two,” Lansky actually laughs in Cecilio’s face, “you have everything to lose.”

“I’ll fucking make you so fucked up you won’t be able to fucking speak,” Cecilio threatens, grabbing Lansky’s tie and yanking him forwards. His voice is raised, and they’re starting to attract attention. The schoolgirl has already fled.

Matteo lays a firm hand on Cecilio’s shoulder. “Cecilio!” he hisses. “I’m _handling_ this.”

“Then _fucking handle it_.” Cecilio drops Lansky’s tie.

Matteo exhales slowly. Lansky waits patiently.

“Alright,” Matteo acquiesces. “Alright.” He levels a glare at Lansky. “We’ll help you get Luciano.”

“No need. Tell me the name.”

“You came here to negotiate,” Matteo’s angry now. “Here’s the middle ground : we get Luciano and you wait for us to get him.”

“How do I know you’ll get him and not lead me to some hotel room to get shot?”

“Luciano and I are old friends,” Matteo says. “I don’t want him dead any more than you do. He and I might have had our spats, but he’s still like a little brother to me. I’ll get him, and I’ll get him alive.”

“And why not me?”

“You’re not one of Capone’s men. You don’t have the same immunity with the people who have Luciano as we do.”

Lansky thinks it over. If anyone tries to catch him in the hotel room, he’s likely to be able to take them down. _Alright_. He’ll give them this one chance. If they screw it up, Lansky knows where they live.

“Fine,” he taps his fingers on the tabletop. “I’ll book a room at the Swan Hotel. And you two will deliver Luciano to my door by midnight.”

“No,” Matteo shoots him down. “We’ll leave at dawn to collect him. No earlier.”

“I’m not going to just sleep through the night knowing that Luciano could be getting tortured somewhere in this very city.”

“Then don’t sleep.” Matteo stands up. “I’ll go to collect him at dawn. Cecilio will visit you at your hotel room tomorrow morning and wait with you until I have Luciano.”

“You think you can do it alone?”

“I took over Luciano’s place as Capone’s right-hand man,” Matteo looks awful proud of himself. “No one will touch me.”

The night passes excruciatingly slowly for Lansky. He spends most of it sitting in the chair by the radiator, trying to keep warm in the freezing room. But the radiator is weak, and he only feels the heat when he reaches out with his hands hovering over the metal. It’s a windy night in Chicago, as it usually is, and the wind whistles through the window frame edges. It rattles the blinds and chills Lansky with its gusts.

He keeps the lamp on by the bedside just in case there are any bugs skittering around on the floor that he’ll want to crush. But the light offers him little solace, and what shadows he does see moving around in the corners of his eyes he cannot bring himself to pay any attention to. His eyelids are heavy, and his eyes burn with every blink he takes.

Lansky knows he should at least lay down on the bed : close his eyes and at least rest if he isn’t going to sleep. But even the thought of doing so makes him only more stubborn in his resolution to sit through the night.

This time of night, it’s too late to call William and Tracey and ask them to hand the telephone to Benjamin. Even if he did call, he’s not sure if he has anything to tell his brother. To entertain the idea of having Luciano back without yet truly having Luciano in front of him seems like a damning jinx. So, he keeps his thoughts away from the morning and continues to stare at the radiator.

Cecilio knocks on his door at six in the morning. It’s earlier than he was expecting. He opens the door, and the man comes in holding a sandwich wrapped in paper that he makes very clear to convey is a favor from Matteo and not him. Lansky sets the sandwich on the bedside table and doesn’t even think about actually eating it until, thirty minutes later, Cecilio snaps at him to stop pacing and eat the thing.

Cecilio is tight-lipped about the time frame that he and Matteo are keeping : when Matteo will leave for Luciano, how long they expect negotiations to last, when Matteo plans on delivering Luciano to Lansky’s hotel room. Lansky can’t get a straight answer out of the man, and they almost dissolve into a seething fight three times before the next two hours can pass. Cecilio’s also brought a bottle of scotch with him and nurses through the cap-fulls of the amber liquid as the hours pass. Lansky’s nervous enough that he has half a mind to demand a swig for himself, but he’s always hated the taste of any whiskey that isn’t American.

The knock on the door comes at ten o’clock sharp, and Cecilio has a gun on Lansky the moment the minute hand turns. Lansky balls his hands into fists where he stands at the window. So, this was their plan. He glances at the door, silently ordering Cecilio to get it before he does it himself.

Cecilio does move to the door. He opens it. Matteo walks into the room, half-dragging Luciano over his shoulder. Lansky gets one look at the blood smeared across Luciano’s… everything and bolts forwards.

“Don’t move,” Cecilio raises the gun again, but Lansky isn’t paying a damn bit of attention to the man.

Matteo doesn’t seem to mind the help and neither does Luciano. There’s a barely lucid groan from Luciano as Lansky takes the other half of his body weight in his arms. They sit him down in the room’s armchair. Matteo takes a step back as Lansky kneels before his partner.

It’s simultaneously worse than Lansky had been expecting and better than it could have easily been. There’s not much left of Luciano’s fingers. They’re curled into twisted and bruised shadows of their former selves, and Lansky can’t bear to look at them for long. Blood has caked on the beds where his nails had once covered. One of the digits is just… gone. The rest clearly had been broken well before dusk yesterday.

Luciano’s face isn’t much better. There are three deep slashes into his left cheek, and one connects to the corner of his lips in a ghastly peel. His nose is very clearly broken, and there’s no way it’ll heal without a bump that hadn’t been there before.

Luciano huffs, and Lansky blinks. He hadn’t realized that Luciano was actually aware of what was going on around him.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Luciano rasps. “They could’ve done worse.”

Lansky wipes his face with his hands. He’s sweating something horrific.

“Luciano’s right,” Matteo says behind him. “They kept things above the waist. Polite-like.”

That doesn’t change the fact that Luciano might never write again. Or cook any of his family recipes for Benjamin and Lansky at dinnertime. Or drive Benjamin home after school. Or weave his fingers through Lansky’s hair ever again.

“Luciano,” Lansky whispers. “God.”

Luciano’s staring at him too calmly for someone who’s just been reunited with his partner. It’s unsettling, but Lansky doesn’t know how to address it.

Matteo and Cecilio are talking quietly in the corner of the room. Lansky can’t bring himself to care about what.

“Lansky,” Luciano swallows, and the wince that accompanies it tells Lansky how much pain Luciano’s in. “Answer me just one thing.”

“Anything.”

“You killed Old Lovino.”

Lansky blinks. Then, there’s white hot rage burning in his chest. _So, it was Amadeo who did all of this_.

“Yeah,” he grits out. “Yeah, I killed Lovino.”

Luciano closes his eyes and leans his head back against the back of the armchair. Lansky’s answer seems to pain him. Lansky rests a hand on Luciano’s knee.

“Don’t.” Luciano’s voice cuts coldly into Lansky. He doesn’t even understand what Luciano means until Luciano jerks his knee away. The motion leaves Lansky’s hand hanging pathetically in the air. “God, Lansky, just. God help me.”

“It was for Dewey,” Lansky tries to explain. “It wasn’t. I wouldn’t have just killed him if I didn’t absolutely have to.”

“I know that! God, Lansky, I know that.”

A silence settles over the room. The gaze of Matteo and Cecilio weigh on Lansky’s back. He wants to tell them to get out, but he knows they won’t listen. They have something planned : after Luciano finishes speaking with him, that is.

“Oh, God,” Luciano moans. He raises a crippled hand up to his face and hides behind it. “That kid had every right to kill me.”

“No, he di-”

“Yes, he did! God, Lansky. I should’ve sold you out the moment he told me why he wanted you.”

Lansky can’t believe his ears. “What?”

“But I didn’t,” Luciano bites out. “I kept my damn mouth shut because I couldn’t do that. I hate you, you bastard. I hate that I couldn’t just give you to him.”

There’s a mumble from Matteo behind them. Lansky doesn’t register any of the words.

“You. You don’t get it, do you, Lansky?” Luciano lowers his hand. He looks tired : tired like Matteo had looked in the library yesterday. “You can’t just… You can’t just break mafia law like that. I don’t care if you’re Italian or not. Capone counted you as one of his. We all did. You had no right to go and kill Lovino.”

“I had no choice.”

“Yes, you fucking did. You could’ve come to me, you bastard. I was _with_ you that night. I shared a bottle of wine with you, leaned against you on that couch with you.” Luciano sniffles.

Lansky can’t remember the last time he heard Luciano cry. He doesn’t think he ever has.

“Oh my god,” Luciano laughs a little crazily. “I’m damned for this. We’re all damned.”

“What I did gave him no right to do… this… to you.”

“Damn fucking straight it did!” Luciano yells at him. “You don’t just break our laws like that! If you do that, the whole goddamn honor system collapses. You’ll have little weasels coming after the big circles. You’ll have sons avenging fathers and fathers avenging sons. All of this,” Luciano gestures wildly, “all of this goddamn harmony and easy business between all of the gangs here in the city is because we keep honor about our laws. You don’t break that shit.”

Luciano takes a shuddering breath.

Matteo clears his throat. “Luciano, you shouldn’t get so excited.”

“Don’t fucking tell me that,” Luciano snaps. “You’re just as at fault for this. You shouldn’t have come and gotten me.”

Matteo hesitates. “You didn’t see how desperate Lansky was,” is all he answers with.

Lansky sits stunned. _Was I that desperate in their eyes_? He sure felt desperate, but he didn’t realize how much of it had shown in his face.

“I don’t care. You broke our laws, too.”

“Things are a little different now,” Cecilio feels the need to speak up. “With what Lansky did in town, the status quo wasn’t worth keeping. Capone won’t mind one less family working with us.”

“With what Lansky did?” Luciano turns to Lansky. “What the fuck did you do?”

“Just killed a few people. No one big.” For once, Lansky is happy that Matteo speaks for him. He’s not sure how he could answer Luciano now.

“You idiot.” Another shuddering breath. “The kid was just avenging his father, Lansky.”

“I didn’t know who had you. No one told me a damn thing.”

“It’s good that they didn’t tell you,” Luciano snaps at him. “I know you would’ve marched right in and gotten Amadeo killed in the process, if not yourself, as well.”

“He deserves it.”

“No, he fucking doesn’t. God, you just don’t get it, do you?”

“What do you even care about more?” Lansky accuses. “Me and the life we’ve made together or your damned, made-up, Italian bullshit rules about your fake conceptions of honor?”

The fury in Luciano’s eyes is enough to make a lesser man cower. “Don’t you fucking talk to me that way.”

Lansky looks at the floor. This is so beyond what he had imagined. Matteo and Cecilio aren’t talking anymore, either. It’s just Luciano’s furious eyes that Lansky is confronted with.

“I,” the words taste bitter in his mouth, “I’m sorry.”

Luciano glares at him for another minute. Maybe, it’s longer. Lansky doesn’t know anything anymore.

Then, Luciano sighs. It’s ragged and wheezes from his lips. Lansky keeps his eyes to the floor as Luciano leans forwards. He doesn’t know what he’s expecting. Luciano’s usual way of solving arguments is with his fists, but he doesn’t have those to his disposal anymore.

Lansky’s startled when, instead of hitting him, Luciano wraps his arms around his neck and leans his body weight down onto Lansky.

“Luciano?”

“Shut up. I’m so mad at you, you’ve no idea.” Luciano’s voice is soft in his ear : a direct contrast to the harshness of his words. He hugs Lansky tighter. “I didn’t give you up, though, you bastard. I just couldn’t do that.”

Lansky carefully raises his hands and wraps his arms around Luciano’s back. He holds the other gently. He’s not sure where Luciano’s bruised under his shirt.

“Thank you,” Lansky tries.

“It wasn’t for you,” Luciano breathes. He’s starting to sound sleepy. His head rests heavier on Lansky’s shoulder. “It was for Benjamin. It was for _me_. I couldn’t bear the thought of it.”

Lansky has nothing to say to that, so he just holds Luciano in his arms.

“As heartwarming as this is,” Cecilio says dryly, “there’s one last bit of business to attend to.”

Luciano withdraws from Lansky and leans back in the armchair. Suddenly, the drowsiness is gone. Lansky recognizes the expression on Luciano’s face. It’s his business expression, and he hasn’t seen it in so long.

“We do.”

Matteo clears his throat. “Capone wants you back, Luciano.”

“He’s not fucking getting him,” Lansky growls, but he’s immediately punished for speaking with a kick from Luciano.

“That’s not for you to decide.”

Lansky spares a glare at Luciano. “We’re done with the city.”

“That’s not your decision to make,” Luciano repeats ; he spits every word. “But, all the same,” he turns back to Matteo, “the answer’s no.”

Matteo runs his hand through his hair and shares a glance with Cecilio. Cecilio’s face isn’t betraying anything, but Matteo looks nervous. It’s getting Lansky’s blood pressure up even more.

“Well. We, uh, we kind of have orders to not let either of you two leave the city alive if you don’t, well, come back to business with us.”

“Excuse me?” Luciano asks. Lansky doesn’t have to look at Luciano to know his partner’s pissed off. “You don’t get to blackmail us like that.”

“Actually, we do,” Cecilio interrupts.

Matteo hushes him with a wave of his hand. “Look, Luciano, just… just think it over. Capone’s worried that if this ever happens again you’ll trade some of our secrets in exchange for Lansky’s life. And vice versa, actually. He wants you two back under him again so he can protect you better.”

“Are you kidding me? I had one of my goddamn fingers cut off with a goddamn bolt cutter knuckle by fucking knuckle, and I didn’t give up a single bit of information on any of you.”

“I know,” Matteo tries to backtrack. “It’s just what Capone said to us.”

Cecilio eyes Lansky. “If I’m being honest, it’s not Luciano he’s worried about. That Jew-”

“Don’t fucking talk about him like that,” Luciano counters before Lansky can even react.

In fact, Lansky’s a little surprised that Luciano spoke up about it at all. Luciano’s never really mentions Lansky’s religion : but in the kind of way that ignores it rather than embraces it. Hearing him finally stand up for Lansky is a little refreshing, though the circumstances could definitely be improved.

“This isn’t getting us anywhere,” Lansky interrupts. “Luciano, you need to go to a hospital.”

Luciano hesitates before he turns to Lansky. There’s a moment where Luciano studies Lansky – looking for what, Lansky doesn’t know – before Luciano nods curtly.

“Matteo, help me to the car.”

Matteo sighs but crosses the room to them.

Lansky clears his throat. “Am I, um, coming along?”

“Of course you are,” Luciano snaps at him. “I’m pissed at you, but you’re still my partner. Unless you’re calling this off?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Then fucking help me out of this chair. I’m still dizzy.”

Lansky supports Luciano’s left, and Matteo takes Luciano’s right arm. Cecilio doesn’t help much : likely because he realizes that neither Luciano nor Lansky want him anywhere close right now. He trails after them like a damn shadow all the way to the car.

They help Luciano into the backseat before Matteo climbs into the passenger seat, leaving Lansky to get in the backseat with Luciano. He’s worried that Luciano’s going to snap at him again, bring up the argument again, but all Luciano does is lean his head on Lansky’s shoulder and hide his eyes in the fabric of Lansky’s shirt.

The drive is short, but the bumpiness of the road isn’t appeasing Luciano’s mood. He’s cursing every time he bumps his nose against Lansky, and he can’t much hold himself up with his fingers the way they are. Lansky, at one point, tries to maneuver Luciano into his lap – which would let Luciano rest his chin on Lansky’s shoulder – but Luciano shrugs his hands away.

By the time Luciano’s given a hospital bed and Cecilio and Matteo have bullied their way into making certain demands for his treatment, Luciano is unconscious on the cot. Lansky sits in the chair by his bedside, long-since familiar with the long waits of a hospital and the scents of metal and disinfectant.

Nurses filter in and out of the room, performing various tasks. The first few set to cauterizing the ugly wound where Luciano’s left ring finger used to be. The next few go through the painful task of unfurling Luciano’s fingers from their misshapen fists and straightening them into individual casts. Luciano wakes up from the pain of it – damn near howling – only to conk right back out again when the nurses give him a heavy dose of coke and whiskey.

After the casts are placed, the frequency of the visits dies down. Some more come still to treat Luciano’s face : gashes and bruises and broken nose and all.

By late afternoon, Luciano is riddled with gauze and stitches but still fast asleep. Lansky hopes that Luciano’s too tired to be having any nightmares. God knows he himself wasn’t able to sleep for weeks after the first time he got caught by a rival gang for fear that he’d wake to find himself tied to a chair again.

Matteo enters the room around seven in the evening long after the sun’s gone down with a bottle of rum and two glasses. He pours both glasses and offers one to Lansky. Lansky accepts it without a word.

Once he’s downed the first glass in a brutal swig that he’ll likely regret in a couple minutes, Matteo hums.

“You know Luciano’s not really mad at you.”

Lansky simply refills his glass. He takes a sip this time. He can’t just get drunk in the hospital by gulping down a whole bottle of rum.

“Could’ve fooled me.”

“Nah,” Matteo shakes his head and swirls his glass. “He’s mad at himself.”

“Not his fault this happened.”

“He doesn’t like having to break mafia law.”

“You Italians and your bullshit rules.”

“They protect you. Both of you. Luciano knows that, and he’s terrified of losing that.”

“We can handle ourselves fine.”

“Have you learned nothing from this?” Matteo sighs. The words are harsh, but Matteo just looks a little disheartened. Maybe it’s the glass of rum in his hand that makes him look pitiful. “Cecilio and I could’ve killed you as soon as we saw you. Cecilio told me you flipped him in broad daylight when he put his hand on your shoulder. What if he had put his gun to your head instead and pulled the trigger before you had realized he was there?”

Lansky chooses to not respond.

“Luciano knows that, all this time, people have been trying to protect the both of you. And he’s terrified that this will mess all of that up.”

“What do you want me to say?” Lansky grouches.

“I don’t know.” Lansky snorts. “You could be a little kinder to him, though. He must care a good deal about you if he risked so much by keeping quiet in front of Amadeo.”

“I know perfectly well how much Luciano _cares_ for me, thank you.” Lansky refills his glass. Matteo looks at him a little funny when he does so. “What about you? Shouldn’t you be worried about Cecilio and yourself when Luciano comes back to the country with me?”

“I am.”

The answer catches Lansky a little off-guard. “Are you?”

“Cecilio and I are getting… sloppy. It’s only a matter of time before someone figures us out. This whole turn of events will certainly place stricter surveillance on us and only quicken that process.”

“Sloppy?” Lansky can’t comprehend the thought. “How often are you leaping for each other? By God.”

Matteo shrugs. “We get drunk, we get handsy, we forget to close curtains, pull the blinds. Lock doors. We’re dead men, basically.”

Lansky squints. He can’t picture Cecilio like that at all, though he’s not trying too hard because he really doesn’t want to in the first place. Luciano and him had never been that reckless about things during the month they stayed in the city, waiting for Benjamin to recover enough from his surgery to move out to Ottawa.

Sure, they had botched a few assignments because they had gotten too distracted in their hotel rooms. Sure, Santo had caught them with Lansky’s arm around Luciano’s waist at the one funeral when they were standing back behind the piano. But Santo’s Santo, and that kid’s too good to even understand why people sell each other out, let alone sell someone out himself.

Mostly, though, they had kept things strictly within their own apartments with the gramophone playing whatever Italian music Luciano put on and the curtains decidedly pulled.

“Well,” Lansky manages. “Good luck.”

“Thanks so much,” Matteo says dryly.

They drink together until Lansky feels the room spinning and he puts his head down on the cot. Matteo takes the rest of the rum away from him and exits the room, mumbling good-byes. Lansky hears Cecilio greet Matteo in the hallway and watches Cecilio barely dodge Matteo’s attempt at a kiss.

Lansky snorts as derisively as he can given the circumstances. Being drunk is a difficult state to really express derision well in. Matteo’s right in saying that he and Cecilio will get caught soon, and he’s probably the one at fault for that.

He doesn’t think much after that, and he slips off to sleep not soon after.

Two days pass. Matteo visits daily with an assortment of gifts ranging from booze and food to books for Lansky to read as he passes the time. Luciano makes a few attempts to start conversation with Lansky, but Lansky doesn’t respond much. He’s still angry that Luciano values the mafia more than him, and he’s more than a little worried that Luciano’s going to bail on him now that the world’s gotten a little more dangerous for them.

In the quiet moments, though, Luciano reaches out with casted fingers in the hopes of catching Lansky’s hand in his. Sometimes, Lansky entertains him. Sometimes, he pulls his hand out of Luciano’s reach and doesn’t look at the expression Luciano makes.

“You know,” Luciano says at one in afternoon on the third day. He’s been quiet all day and even refused to eat lunch last hour when the nurses brought it. “Amadeo knew what the ring was.”

Lansky glances at the missing spot where Luciano’s ring finger once was. He hadn’t even remembered that Luciano was wearing it that night. He supposes it’s a stupid thing to forget, since Luciano usually refused to take the ring off unless he was showering.

Luciano seems worked up about this, so Lansky lowers the book he’s reading and gives the other his full attention.

“He just ripped it right off my finger. Started saying all sorts of shit. Punched the fuck out of me when I told him to keep his trap shut. Threw the damn thing into the fireplace while it was still lit.”

Lansky swallows. There’s a pit of disgust in his throat and low in his gut. “So, that’s why he only caught off that one?”

Luciano nods mutely, expression twisted into some horrible emotional pain. It’s clear that Luciano wants reassurance right now.

“It was just a ring,” Lansky says.

Luciano sits upright in bed. He stares at Lansky as if Lansky had just called the Virgin Mary a whore. Lansky realizes he’s said something wrong.

“Just a ring?” Luciano repeats incredulously. “You goddamn proposed to me with that ring, Meyer.”

 _Oh_. Lansky didn’t realize Luciano was that sentimental about it. Though, it makes sense, he supposes.

The day that Lansky proposed, they had been smoking in Luciano’s apartment. It was supposed to just be a day off for them : no assignments, no people to visit. Just them, the cigarettes (for Lansky) and cigars (for Luciano), and the music. At some point, they had started kissing real lazy as they had lain on the bed, taking long breaks in between kisses to smoke and stare at the ceiling. Lansky still doesn’t know why he had chosen _then_ to give Luciano the ring. But it had been in his pocket, and he had just… found himself pulling it out of his pocket and sliding it onto Luciano’s left ring finger while the other man still had his tongue in Lansky’s mouth.

Luciano had seemed real happy about it. Broke the kiss just to admire it and laid there staring at his hand for several minutes. Then, kissed Lansky deep and crawled on top of him laughing joyously like there wasn’t a single thing wrong with the world.

They hadn’t left the apartment until two days later when they left only to visit Benjamin and go straight back to Lansky’s apartment, where Lansky had gotten out the other ring from his dresser and let Luciano slide it onto his left ring finger, too.

Perhaps, it made more than a bit of sense that Luciano was so upset about losing it. Lansky thinks about how to save this conversation before it became another argument.

“I can get us another set of rings,” Lansky tells him. “Just because you lost that ring doesn’t mean you lost all your memories about it.”

“Well, yeah, but it meant something, you know?”

“That meaning hasn’t gone away,” Lansky risks. He sneaks a hand into Luciano’s palm. “You know I… I still love you, right? I’m just. I’m just angry about some things right now.”

Luciano stares at him for a moment before chuckling a little. “Yeah, you idiot. I know. You know I do, too, right?”

Lansky doesn’t know. Luciano can still leave, and Lansky’s still scared he will. But he nods a little and returns his attention to the book.

“How’s Benjamin doing?” Luciano presses.

 _So, he_ _’_ _s not done yet trying to get my attention_ , Lansky sighs to himself.

“Kid’s fine,” he answers. “I called him last morning and told him we’d be another two weeks while you got healed up.”

“Yeah? He’s not lonely?”

“Benny’s constantly lonely,” Lansky grumbles. “He just keeps quiet about it because he thinks he’s being kind or some shit.”

“Ah, come on. He doesn’t look lonely to me when he falls asleep between us on the couch.”

Maybe that had been becoming a bit of a weekend tradition for them, Lansky begrudgingly admits. Friday and Saturday nights were nice like that.

Aloud, Lansky says, “I don’t think he’s keeping up with his math like I told him to.”

“Well, you are the one that tutors him with that. He probably doesn’t see the point without you there.”

“He’s not going to pass his exams if he can’t figure out how to do his geometric proofs.”

“And when have you or I ever had to use geometric proofs? It’s a waste of his time.”

“It’s not a waste. It teaches him logic skills.”

“Benny’s got enough skill with logic already.”

Lansky sets down his book. He wants to glare at Luciano, but the man’s smiling at him ridiculously. It looks even more stupid with the stitches in his cheek and his nose still covered with gauze.

Lansky finds himself leaning in to kiss Luciano before he registers the fact that he even wants to. Luciano seems to like it, though, for all he immediately opens his mouth. Lansky doesn’t get far with his tongue before Luciano hisses in pain and pulls away, bringing the back of his hand up to half-cradle his stitches.

“Sorry, that burns.”

Lansky laughs a little freely at that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> one more chapter left!! i'm really excited to write the 'return to domesticity' that lansky, luciano, and benjamin will struggle with a bit. thank you, everyone, so much for leaving such kind comments!!


	5. io

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm so sorry for the long wait! i spent so much time debating exactly how i wanted to go about the final act of the story. it ended up being a Long One. i hope you enjoy!
> 
> author’s note : matteo shelling out eight hundred bucks is nearly $11k today soooo
> 
> tw // torture (mentioned)  
> tw // domestic abuse (luciano hits lansky once)

The hotel that they had been rooming in on that fateful Friday evening had the worst heating system in all of Chicago. It had been the middle of January at the time. The streets were piled up with snow so thick that cars were useless, and more kept coming down by the hour. The thermometer outside the bank downtown had read twenty-three degrees Fahrenheit when Luciano had gone by earlier that day to deposit the cash from his last deal.

Their stakeout earlier that week on Wednesday night and early Thursday morning hadn’t been intended to take very long. Capone had just wanted clarification that it was the O’Donnells doing deals with Little Tommy behind his back. And, just in case the O’Donnells’ men tried to pull something, Luciano and Lansky had been assigned to the task. It wasn’t just because they were partners, either, but also because Lansky was notorious for his negotiation skills to the same extent that Luciano was notorious for leaving scenes a massacre when other parties didn’t cooperate.

But with their car completely snowed in from the storm, they had agreed to wait another night for the municipal workers to clear the snow from the streets before they went to the effort of shoveling the car out.

So, they had drawn the curtains and started a fire in the fireplace with the wood from downstairs, thankful for at least a little goddamned heat. Sitting on the floor with their work clothes mostly off, they had slipped into an easy silence. Although, the atmosphere had been a little strained : mostly because, at that time, Luciano hadn’t even seen Lansky even with his tie loosened, let alone sitting on a blanket with his vest and coat and suspenders all off.

Luciano wasn’t stupid. He knew Lansky liked him and liked him more than the regular way you really liked your fellow chap or colleague. If the way Lansky reacted to the greeting kisses he got from the Southern Italians wasn’t already a clear indicator, then the way he had gotten flustered when Luciano had slung an arm around his waist while drunk out of his mind two weeks ago had definitely done it.

Of course, there wasn’t much of a problem about it in Luciano’s mind. He found it kind of funny when Matteo kissed Lansky after not seeing each other for a bit (Matteo was a bit kissy with everyone that way, and he was _very_ attractive) and Lansky cleared his throat while his eyes darted about the room like he was desperately trying to think about something else. Luciano knew the other men in the upper circles chalked it up to Lansky’s discomfort with South Italian culture. And, well, he wasn’t going to get Lansky killed by correcting them on the matter.

The day that Lansky had taken Luciano by the small of his back and walked him to the car – driving Luciano, who had been confused as hell at the time, to the hospital and then introducing him to his little brother – had been one of the best days of Luciano’s life. Benjamin had been a real force of nature and a testament to the goodness possible in mankind. Not only that, Benjamin had known exactly why Lansky had suddenly brought someone to meet him.

And Benjamin had told Luciano exactly what Lansky thought of Luciano with such confidence that Luciano had momentarily forgotten that the kid was supposed to be ailing. So, they had talked about Lansky for hours. And, after that day, Luciano had kept coming back not just because the thought of Lansky finding him attractive was so compelling but also because this kid was making Luciano remember softer emotions that he had thought he had no capability for. Adoration, protectiveness : mentorship, even.

So, in a freezing little hotel room in the middle of January with Lansky down to his undershirt and pants, Luciano had been waiting for one of them to just make the first move. They were always so confident with each other with the way they moved each other around and worked side-by-side. It should’ve been easy to kiss, fall into bed, rinse and repeat. Except they were still just sitting by the fire.

Eventually, they gravitated towards each other over the course of a few, slow hours. By sunset, Luciano had Lansky’s head on his shoulder and a hand on the curve of Lansky’s waist. And then, Lansky had pressed a kiss to Luciano’s hand before standing up and announcing that he’d buy them some alcohol for the night.

It had been a little outside of the mood, but Luciano hadn’t questioned it. He just grabbed his coat and handed Lansky fifty dollars for a bottle of Château Mouton and a few extra dollars to cover Lansky’s preferred drink of whiskey and rum.

It had taken Lansky two hours to return to their hotel room. When he had returned to a pissed-off Luciano alone in a hotel room that hadn’t warmed much since he had left, Lansky had made an excuse about the weather slowing the taxis and set the alcohol on the bedside table. Lansky had made up for it by letting Luciano lay his head down in his lap on the couch that night. With strong and calloused fingers combing through his hair, Luciano had let the matter go.

If Luciano had known that Lansky had spent the better part of those two hours traveling to and from the apartment complex across from the Sofitel and murdering Old Lovino, he might have killed Lansky himself that night.

Luciano stands outside Abate’s Jewelry and Formalwear with the November wind of Chicago’s tall streets forcing a chill through even the thick fabric of his prized, wool-and-fur overcoat. He’s got a hand on his hat, keeping it on his head even as the uptakes on the stronger gusts try to steal it from him. The metal of the casts on his fingers glint in the cutting sunlight he stands under.

It’s been two weeks that he’s been under the care of St. Mary’s Hospital. His sutures have dissolved now, and most of his bruises have healed. Tomorrow, the casts will come off, and Lansky will drive them back to Ottawa along with the packet of physical therapy instructions that Luciano will have to do if he ever wants to regain mobility in his fingers.

The scars on his cheek will last through his lifetime. The nurses have reassured him countless times that, in five years, they’ll only be whispers of lines on his skin. Apparently, he’s got a good immune system and heals better than most people. Luciano thinks it’s kind of funny how he always seems to get dealt the best cards in life.

Matteo nudges his shoulder. “Are we going in, or are you going to continue staring at their display?”

Luciano startles. He had forgotten, somehow, that Matteo was with him. “I don’t know.”

“Well, do you want to see what they have inside?”

The bouncer keeps glancing at them nervously like he’s waiting for them to rob the store or something. It’s not an unreasonable assumption. Two Italian mobsters known for their connections with Capone eyeing up a Jewish jewelry shop isn’t exactly something that tends to end in a purchase.

“Yeah,” Luciano says. “Yeah, we can go in.”

Matteo gets the door for him and holds it open. Luciano wants the snap at the man that he can open the door himself, but, really, he can’t : not with his fingers still so fucked up. He grumbles under his breath as he enters and ignores the exasperated smile Matteo gives him.

He goes over to the display of rings. The man at the counter doesn’t seem to know what to do with himself, and one of the ladies boldly comes over to serve Luciano instead.

“Are you looking for something in particular, sir?”

Luciano shakes his head. Normally, he’d wave his hand for the charming effect, but alas. “Nah, darling. I’m just looking.”

Matteo comes up behind him and quietly waits as Luciano gazes at the ring display.

The selection is… suitable. Really, Luciano would rather be buying from his friend uptown, but he’s not sure anymore if Lansky would even accept a ring bought from an Italian store. Even just thinking about Lansky’s disapproval, Luciano feels himself shutting down.

He’s not exactly comfortable with calling himself needy, or even clingy, because those words have a certain feminine connotation that he’d rather not be equated to. All of the touching he does with Lansky is just his way of expressing his interest. But now that Lansky’s being distant with him, Luciano is desperate for even just the bare scraps of affection Lansky hands out on the odd day. So, maybe, he’s coming to admit that he’s needy.

Maybe a ring will help. Maybe it won’t. Lansky didn’t seem particularly bothered about the ring when Luciano had told him about it, and it still sits uneasy in Luciano’s mind. _Did that bastard not care because it no longer means something to him? Will this new ring even mean something to him_? He’s risking a lot with this purchase. And, if he’s being honest with himself, is pride is the least of his concerns.

He’s been with Lansky nearly a year now, and he still has no idea what to buy the man ring-wise. The rings that Lansky had bought were simple silver bands. With all the money he was saving away for Benjamin’s hospital bills and the house, Lansky hadn’t done anything fancy with the quality of them. There hadn’t been any money to really cater to any preferences Lansky might have on the matter. But Luciano’s got a little more pocket change than Lansky, and he’s already hassled Matteo into covering whatever he can’t afford.

Luciano supposes it’s pretty pathetic to get your best man to cover ring costs, but he’s not the one making a pretty penny working for Capone anymore. Plus, covering the full cost of the house in Ottawa and the car and paying the remainder of Benjamin’s bills had drained his bank account rather dry. Luciano had, perhaps, gone overboard on the expenses of the furniture and appliances he had bought for their home, too. So, Matteo’s checkbook it is.

Still, he’s no idea about what to do with the ring design.

“You’re going to burn holes in the glass case,” Matteo snorts.

“Shut up. I’m thinking.”

Matteo hums. The broad’s returned to cleaning some of the jewels in the next case over, but she keeps glancing over at them. Luciano feels that everyone’s judging him.

 _God, what am I doing_? Luciano thinks. He’s trying to buy Lansky’s affections with this.

“This is stupid,” he says aloud. “It’s not going to work.”

“Five minutes ago you looked like you were drowning in despair because you didn’t have a ring. Now, you’re scared to buy one. Make up your mind.”

“Shut up,” Luciano repeats. “I’m not buying this just to get rejected.”

“You’re not going to get rejected.”

“You don’t understand. It’s been so… strained between us lately.”

“Yes, well, look at the state of your hands. You’re not exactly doing well. Anyone would worry and get moody if their lover was damn near disabled.”

“You’re not in a position to say that. Your love life sucks, man.”

Matteo sighs. “Yeah. Yeah, it does, doesn’t it.” It’s not a question, and Luciano glances away. He feels kind of bad for saying that.

He keeps trying to convince Matteo to ask Cecilio to do something proper with him : something that isn’t what they’ve been doing. Both of them could benefit from a little domesticity. Matteo sure as hell is wasting away without it. Luciano can’t really see Cecilio enjoying domesticity, per say, but maybe it would smooth over some of his rough edges. At the very least, they could stop treating their relationship like some huge conspiracy.

Luciano’s not about to start that argument up again in a dead silent jewelry store, though, so he continues to stare at the rings.

He can’t tear his eyes off the glittering row of engagement rings that are set up in the center of the display case. There’s another case of them behind Matteo, but Luciano isn’t ready to admit that they’re what’s catching his interest instead of the wedding bands. Luciano sighs. Maybe he should get engagement rings _and_ wedding bands.

Then, he decides against it. Matteo might kill him if Luciano asked for another couple hundred dollars.

It takes him another few minutes before he gathers the courage to move to the engagement ring display. Matteo watches him in disgruntled confusion before he registers exactly what Luciano’s looking at in the case and his eyebrows shoot up.

“Holy shit,” he breathes. “You’re not getting an engagement ring, are you?”

“Do you think I shouldn’t?” Luciano bites him lip. _Is it too feminine? Would Lansky take offense to it?_ Lansky did hate effeminate gestures.

Matteo crowds his side, and Luciano shoves at him a little. The guy can shop for himself and Cecilio on his own damn time.

“That’s quite the statement to make,” Matteo says. He looks nervous now, which is weirding Luciano out.

“And wedding bands aren’t?”

“They send a different kind of message, don’t you think? A wedding band is acknowledging something you already have. It’s confident-like, right? But an engagement ring? Like these? That’s,” Matteo hesitates, “Luciano, are you sure?”

“I don’t know! I’m fucking freaking out, too.”

“Um,” the girl pipes up. She’s too nervous to really be trying to sell them anything, but she’s still clearly trying to meet her quota. “Women do tend to find engagement rings more romantic, if you’re worried about rejection.” Matteo snorts.

That doesn’t help Luciano in the slightest, but he smiles at her anyways. “Thanks, doll. I’m just the nervous type.”

She seems to get the message and ducks her head back down.

“You sure about this?” Matteo asks him again.

“Do you think it’s… too much?”

Matteo steps closer to whisper in Luciano’s ear, and Luciano goes still. He despises how weird this looks, but it’s not like they can just talk about Lansky aloud without getting shooed out of the store with a plethora of insults.

“I don’t know if Lansky’s going to react well if you give him something that you’d use to propose to a girl.”

“What if he does like it though?” Luciano whispers back. There’s a beautiful ring towards the back that has a thin gold band to it and a pretty little four-pronged diamond. It’s been attracting his eye since he moved over to this case.

It’s one of those newer styles without the heavy weight that engagement rings usually come with, but the diamond is still plenty big. Big enough that on his and Lansky’s rough hands, it’d still be noticeable. The little card next to it says it’s a 3.9 carat, and the price tag certainly reflects that. Luciano wonders if they have a 2.9 carat of the same style.

Matteo snaps his fingers, and Luciano realizes he’s zoned out.

“You really want the engagement ring.”

Luciano hesitates. Then, he says, “Yeah.”

“Am I buying one or two of these things?”

“Two.” He really hopes that his ring size won’t be different post-bludgeoning. With the casts still on, he has no way to measure it. But he can see that some of them are thicker than they used to be, and he’s going to get a size up for himself just in case.

Matteo sighs. “You really goddamn owe me one for this. This is, God, a couple month’s worth of good deals right here for your rings.”

Luciano laughs and pats Matteo on the back. “Come on,” he says, “one good rum run, and you’ll have the money right back in your pocket.”

Matteo glares at him tiredly.

“I want the one in the back.”

“Which one in the back? There’s like ten of them a row.”

“Fourth from the left.”

A pause. “That is four hundred fucking dollars. I’m not shelling out eight hundred fucking dollars, Luciano.”

“Come on, I can cover two hundred.”

“I’m not shelling out six hundred fucking dollars.”

“Mattie, I’m begging you. Haven’t I always been a good friend?”

“Go wait outside while I sign the check, you fucking leech.”

The drive back to Ottawa, Illinois, in the mid-December is a palette of greys and browns : occasionally streaked with white and black. The countryside of Illinois is littered with farmland in between the towns of brick and the soot-streaked sidewalks and roads that connect them. Canadian geese cluster in gaggles as they pick through the dust and forgotten husks in the cornfields. Ever low in the sky, the sun burns the eyes as it scatters off of what snow is left on the ground and the shiny hood of the car.

Lansky and Luciano keep silent throughout the drive. Lansky doesn’t particularly want to talk – he’s still fairly peeved with some of what Luciano said in the city about the mafia and about him – and he’s going to assume that Luciano would rather stay quiet, too. After all, Luciano hasn’t even tried once so far to talk.

It’s fine with Lansky. He’s driving since Luciano’s fingers are still unusable, and it gives him a good distraction. While there aren’t many other drivers on the interstate to be careful of, they’ve had three deer run out in front of them within the last thirty minutes. Lansky supposes that’s what they get for leaving so early in the morning.

It’s a Saturday, so, by the time they arrive home, Lansky will have to pick Benjamin up from the neighbors and spend the weekend going over the material that Benjamin’s covered in the last two weeks of school. He already has a plan on how to cover all five subjects by Sunday night so that Benjamin can score well on the three exams he has on Monday. First, they’ll cover Benjamin’s maths, then his English-

Luciano coughs in the passenger seat.

Lansky glances over at him, trying to ignore the flare of fear in his chest. He focuses on the road once more. He calms down eventually, reassuring himself that Luciano couldn’t have caught an illness while in the hospital. His room had been too far from patients suffering from disease. But, still, the worry bubbles close to the surface. It’s a lingering fear from Benjamin’s hospital days.

He takes the turn onto their local state route and continues south, where the sun waits for them blinding and unkind. Luciano grumbles something distinctly unpleasant and shifts in his seat to hide his face under Lansky’s hat : which he stole earlier that morning.

Lansky clears his throat. “You alright?”

“No, of course I’m fucking not. My fingers hurt like you can’t fucking imagine, and the car’s freezing.”

“The car heater died on the way to Chicago, sorry.”

“Yeah, well, that doesn’t help a damn bit, now does it? Should’ve bought one while we were there. It’s not like you didn’t have two weeks.”

Lansky bites the inside of his lip. He had been afraid of another argument. “I was trying to keep you company.”

“You barely fucking talked to me,” Luciano snatches the hat off his head with his wrists. Lansky doesn’t turn to look, but he’s sure that Luciano is fuming. “Could’ve at least done something useful than ignore me while reading book after fucking book.”

“It wasn’t safe for me to be on the streets.”

“No one’s going to fucking knife you in the middle of downtown, idiot.”

Lansky doesn’t continue the argument any further. There’s no point, and he’s so tired of it. “I think we have another robe under the back seats. I can pull over, if you want.”

“Yeah, and it’ll be as cold as the rest of car when I put it on. No.”

Lansky sighs. “Then, give me your hands at least.”

Luciano stares at him for a minute. They hit a pothole, and Luciano hisses like he’s the one that just got jabbed by hard concrete and not the tire. He surrenders his hands to Lansky carelessly, but Lansky knows that Luciano’s actually damn scared of what he’s about to do.

So, Lansky is careful with Luciano’s hands when he guides them down to his lap and between his thighs.

“What the fuck?” Luciano asks eloquently.

“It’s warmer.”

“Yeah, I can sit on my own hands, thanks.”

“God,” Lansky bites. “Can you just shut up and be grateful?”

“Excuse me?”

“Just lay down or something.”

“Yeah, jackass, where?”

“Don’t give me that attitude. There’s plenty of space in the cabin. Just put your head and shoulders on my lap.”

“I’m not Benjamin.”

“Did I say you were?” Lansky’s lowered his speed just so he can glare at Luciano in short intervals.

“Pull over.”

“Huh?”

“I said pull over. Now.”

Lansky really doesn’t want to, but he also really doesn’t want to deal with Luciano if he _doesn_ _’_ _t_ pull over. So, he brakes slowly and drives them off the road and into the wet and muddy ditch. He puts the car in park with no small amount of force and turns in his seat to Luciano.

“Alright. What?”

Luciano manages surprise him, and it’s with a surprisingly demanding kiss. Lansky sits still for a second. Sure, their arguments usually end up like this – or, if he’s being honest, much messier and hotter – but Luciano’s been in city mode ever since this whole thing started, and Lansky hadn’t thought that there would be much kissing for a while. He responds cautiously, not daring to lift his hands to Luciano’s waist. He’s not in the mood for another argument if Luciano feels like he’s being treated too womanly.

Luciano pulls away after a minute and stays there a few inches from Lansky’s face, still scowling.

“You’re still angry,” Lansky remarks.

“Yeah, no shit I’m still angry. I can’t use my goddamn hands. They feel like they’re on fucking fire.”

“You said they were cold.”

“They are cold. They’re so fucking cold they feel like they’re on fire.”

“Would putting on my gloves hurt too much?”

“Yes.”

Lansky thinks. “Do you want the robe?”

“No.”

“God, damn it, Luciano. I don’t know what you want if you won’t tell me.”

“I want you to stop treating me like I’m going to fucking explode at any second. Yeah, I’m fucking angry. When has that ever actually bothered you?”

“It never did because I never had any reason to believe you were going to walk out the door on me.”

Luciano scrunches up his face, and, for a man who’s still healing some of the bones in his face, it doesn’t hold the same handsome charm it once did. “You think I’m going to what?”

“You heard me.”

“Yeah, I did, and I wanna know why you think I’m going to do that to you and Benny.”

Lansky pointedly eyes Luciano’s hands, where they still sit on his right thigh.

“Fuck, man. You don’t think I’m going to walk out the door just ‘cause of what happened?”

“I do.”

Luciano seems startled by this answer, if not a little insulted. He goes quiet for a few minutes, not looking at Lansky and instead at the leather seats.

“God, what happened to us, Meyer?” he sighs. “Arguing used to be sexy.”

“We got married.”

“Yeah, well, arguing was still sexy before this happened. Fuck, we were halfway to getting our pants off that very night because you decided you wanted to keep drinking after I told you to stop.”

It’s not a good memory, and Lansky winces. He’s not going to allow himself to lose his sobriety ever again in that house.

Luciano has a sixth sense of when Lansky’s going too far down a spiral of self-blame, Lansky swears, because he always manages to catch Lansky before he gets more than a few steps down. Even now, Luciano’s leaning in and kissing him softly. He’s successful, as he always is, because Lansky can never focus for long on much else when Luciano’s kissing him.

He’s not sure how long they neck in the car. They end up with one of Lansky’s legs thrown up on the seats as Luciano half-lays on it : the other still down in the compartment by the pedals. Lansky’s one arm is wrapped around Luciano’s waist, and the other holds Luciano up against him by his ass. Luciano’s got his tongue in Lansky’s mouth, humming contentedly between kisses. Every time Lansky lets out a sigh at Luciano biting his lip or tucking his hand down near Lansky’s belt, Luciano gets a little smugger.

They separate when a car comes up on them and passes. They catch their breaths a little, waiting to make sure the car doesn’t come back asking questions.

“I missed hearing you whine,” Luciano croons at him when the tense moment’s gone.

Lansky scowls. “I don’t _whine_.”

“You sigh like I’m doing much more than what I’m doing.”

Lansky scoffs and wrestles his leg out from under Luciano, swinging it back down into the compartment. “I’m sorry I’m loud, I guess.”

“No, no, I like it.” Luciano smirks. “I love it.”

Lansky ignores him as he takes the car out of park and, checking his mirrors, pulls back onto the road.

“Oh, come on,” Luciano continues. He lays his head down in Lansky’s lap as Lansky had suggested earlier : as if he hadn’t snapped at Lansky for offering the idea. “There’s something that I do that gets you all stiff, I’m sure.”

Lansky does indeed know exactly what Luciano does that provokes that kind of reaction from him, but he, politely, keeps his mouth shut.

“You can tell me,” Luciano moves his head a bit in Lansky’s lap, very thinly pretending to get comfortable and very obviously trying to mess with Lansky.

“I’m driving.”

“Yeah? Want me to stop moving?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me.”

Lansky sighs yet again. It’s only nine in the morning. He can’t believe he’s already this exhausted. “I like that thing you do when we’re in bed.”

Luciano laughs. “Yeah, I do quite a few things in bed, darling.”

“You know I hate pet names.”

“Sorry, handsome.”

Lansky’s going to shove him off his lap. “I like when you hide your face in the pillow, you fucker. You used to be so goddamn loud in our apartments back in the day.”

“I’m not the loud one between the two of us.”

“ _Anymore_.”

Luciano hums in amusement, eyes twinkling up at Lansky as Lansky glances down every few seconds. “You should watch the road and not me.”

“I’m still afraid you’re going to do something down there now that you’re in the mood.”

Luciano snorts. “I can’t really do anything with my hands like they are, sorry.”

“Oh. Sorry. I forgot.”

“You’re not the one with your fingers on fire. Of course you forgot. It’s not… it’s not insulting or anything.”

“Still.”

There’s a beat of silence, and Lansky wonders if they might manage to finish the last twenty minutes of the drive in silence.

“So, really, you like the pillow thing that much?”

Apparently not.

“Among other things, yes.”

“Oh? Do tell.”

When they do get home, there’s a bit of silence. They sit in the car on the road a bit, staring at the house and their dirt driveway up to the tree line. First, it’s just Lansky that’s hesitating : not sure if he’s ready to return to this safe place of domesticity that the three of them had forged from nothing. Then, Luciano’s upright in his seat again and it’s the both of them hesitating. They’re both afraid that coming back won’t feel like coming _home_ anymore : knowing it’s all been ripped away once.

“I never liked this dirt path we have,” Luciano says, and Lansky shifts his gaze to the makeshift driveway.

He doesn’t like it either : especially doesn’t like it now with all of the memories attached. But it’s saved Benjamin’s life, so Lansky isn’t willing to retire it.

“Yeah,” he says simply.

He drives up the incline and into the trees, parking the car and turning off the engine. Again, they sit for a few minutes.

“Did we leave dirty dishes in the sink?”

Lansky thinks. “Yeah, we did.”

“Well. Looks like you have quite the disgusting task once we get in.”

“Yeah.”

He gets out of the car and goes over to open the door for Luciano. The first few steps towards the house are refreshing in their familiarity. Lansky’s thinking that it might not be so bad, after all, until he sees the way Luciano’s eyeing the bushes and Benjamin’s window : still open.

Lansky wraps an arm around Luciano’s waist.

“What? Are you sentimental?”

“You look… tense.”

“I did have the worst night of my life right here.”

Lansky nods. Unlike Lansky and Benjamin, Luciano never got to go back into the house that night once the whole turn of events had ended.

They take it slow : crossing the yard and climbing onto the porch. Luciano wrinkles his nose at the blood stains still off to the side of the door but doesn’t make a comment. Lansky promises himself silently that he’ll buy paint in town later today to cover it.

They enter through the front door once Lansky’s unlocked it. Lansky takes off his shoes at the door – an old habit now courtesy of Luciano’s old whining about how often he had to mop – and immediately sets to helping Luciano take off his overcoat and hat. It’s a lot like when Benjamin had first come home.

It’s different, too, though, because Lansky’s not worried about Luciano’s legs giving out.

Lansky heads to the kitchen once he’s done helping Luciano. Luciano was right about the dishes. The rice has long since gone hard as stone, and the sauce-water mixture in the other pan has started up an interesting mini-classroom for biology. He turns the hot water on and waits for it to heat up enough to start washing.

“Oh, you didn’t put the bottle away.”

Lansky looks up to see that Luciano’s drifted into the living room. He has the wine bottle in between his wrists and carries it over to the dinner table in the kitchen.

“I put your record away, though.”

“I saw. Thank you.”

The kitchen stays silent as Lansky does the dishes. He’s not sure what exactly Luciano’s doing at the dinner table to amuse himself while he waits. Once he’s done the dishes and turns around, he sees that Luciano has put his head in his arms on the table.

Lansky takes the seat opposite from the man and brings the wine bottle closer to him. It’s corked and still good, and he wonders if a bit of alcohol might give Luciano some cheer. The nurses had strictly forbidden him from drinking any of the liquor that Matteo and Lansky had shared. The result, of course, had been a lot of testy silences whilst Matteo poured more cups.

Luciano looks up at the sound of the cork.

“No, Lansky,” he groans. “I’m begging you not to get drunk.”

“I’m not the one drinking, dumbass,” Lansky retorts. “I still have to get Benjamin from the neighbors’.”

Luciano raises an eyebrow and watches as Lansky retrieves a single glass from their cabinetry. Lansky pours the glass for Luciano and corks the bottle again, returning it to their wine rack.

“You know,” Luciano calls. Lansky grunts in response and looks over his shoulder. “I can’t exactly hold the glass myself.”

“Use your palms.”

Luciano scoffs but takes up the wine glass between his palms, carefully avoiding hitting his fingers, and takes a sip. He hums at the flavor, seems to ponder it a bit. Lansky rolls his eyes.

“I think it tasted better that night.”

“Well, we were,” _how did Luciano put it_ , “halfway to getting our pants off.”

A snicker. Then, Luciano barks a laugh. “Those words do not sound nearly as sweet in your mouth, my dear.”

“Again, the pet names.”

“Whoops. Sorry, handsome.” A wink.

“Alright. I’m going to get Benjamin, then.” Lansky goes to Luciano and rests a hand on Luciano’s shoulder. “Be decent when I return.” He presses a kiss to the top of Luciano’s head : brings his other hand up to comb through Luciano’s hair.

It’s incredibly greasy. He’ll need to help Luciano shower at some point today.

“You’re sickening,” Luciano complains. “Get out of here already.”

Lansky flicks him on the cheek.

Picking up Benjamin is a little more energy than Lansky thinks he was equipped for today. The neighbors ask all sorts of worried questions about the city and about Luciano and Lansky’s well-being : all of which Lansky deflects with a cheerful veneer. Benjamin continues to send Lansky anxious glances that Lansky has no choice but to ignore as he talks with William and Tracey.

They end up talking at the front door for twenty minutes before the conversation begins to reach its _al coda_ and Lansky has the opening to make some excuse about not wanting to intrude on them for much longer. It gets him and Benjamin out the door, but Tracey is insistent on giving Lansky a tin of cookies that she says she had baked for Benjamin last night.

At the car, Lansky goes to help Benjamin in the car before he remembers that Benjamin doesn’t need that help anymore. He lingers by the trunk a moment before going to the driver’s door.

Benjamin is quieter than Lansky had been expecting as he starts the car. It isn’t until they’re halfway home that Benjamin speaks, and his voice is quiet enough that Lansky has to ask him to repeat himself.

“How’s Luciano?”

“Ah.” Lansky thinks about how to phrase things. Benjamin might be resilient and good-natured, but the healing process is tricky. He doesn’t want to talk behind Luciano’s back about this. “He’ll be alright.”

“You didn’t tell me on the phone why they hospitalized him. Was it… serious?”

“He just needed casts. He’ll be alright once he’s gone through with the therapy.”

“Therapy?”

Lansky clears his throat uncomfortably. “You’ll see when we get home. I’m sure Luciano will answer anything you ask.”

“But what did they do to him.”

“You’ll see when we get home.”

Benjamin frowns but doesn’t press further. Lansky pulls into their driveway.

He turns off the car and glances at the kitchen windows. He doesn’t see Luciano waiting for them, so he has another second or so with Benjamin alone. He looks to the tin of cookies in Benjamin’s lap.

“Those aren’t really for you, are they?”

“Huh? Oh, these?” Benjamin doesn’t seem happy with them, which piques Lansky’s curiosity further. “I, uh, may have asked if I could make snickerdoodles for Luciano. Mrs. Hill helped me bake them.”

“I’m sure Luciano will like them.” Lansky rests a hand on Benjamin’s shoulder, tries to smile a little reassuringly.

Benjamin returns Lansky’s small smile. “How is he really feeling?”

“You know Luciano. He doesn’t like it when he’s at a low point.”

“Is he upset?”

“Yeah. He’s being quiet about it for now.” Benjamin nods mutely. “He’ll want to see you. Go on inside, and I’ll get your things from the trunk.”

Benjamin hums and gets out of the car. Lansky watches him walk up to their porch and disappear through the front door. He sighs.

When Lansky drags Benjamin’s suitcase and knapsack through the front door, he’s greeted with the sight of Benjamin and Luciano in a tight embrace in the kitchen. Luciano presses a kiss to Benjamin’s forehead : gentler than Lansky thinks he’s ever seen him. He averts his eyes and takes the luggage upstairs. Whatever tense air between him and Luciano there might be, Benjamin has clearly declared his immunity to it.

He takes his time in unpacking the suitcase of clothes and books. He hangs up the shirts first, then the pants. So much of Benjamin’s wardrobe now is garments that Luciano’s bought for him. They’re not all things that Luciano would wear himself, but the quality of the fabrics is something that only men like Luciano and Matteo would nitpick. It’s different than the simple cotton fabrics that Lansky buys for their low prices.

Sometimes, Lansky forgets how far into his and Benjamin’s lives Luciano has penetrated. The comfort of sharing meals and sharing beds has become so normal to him that, when stepping back and really seeing the traces of Luciano stained all over, it’s a little disorienting. Lansky doesn’t think he knows what to do anymore if Luciano leaves. It’s not so simple any more that he could just pack up a box or two of things to send off. The whole house – their whole lifestyle – is much harder to start afresh from.

His chest gets tight enough that he has to stop unpacking Benjamin’s things before he gets through all of the socks. Going downstairs isn’t any easier, either, but Lansky can handle it better, he thinks, than he can his own thoughts.

Days pass. Dynamics shift more than Lansky could have really prepared himself for. For one, Luciano sleeps in much more than he did before. It’s not necessarily that Luciano was ever an early riser – it’s always been Lansky cooking breakfast and seeing Benjamin out the door for the bus – but it’s taking some getting used to now that Luciano barely gets out of the bed before noon anymore.

Lansky knows it’s because of the fear that comes with the night now. They don’t stay up drinking and listening to music anymore. They don’t sleep much, either. Every night is a long stretch of lying in bed completely still and waiting for some inevitable horror to present itself. Lansky usually falls asleep before Luciano, and he’s usually woken just before dawn by Luciano finally curling up against his side, shaking, sometimes with fresh tear stains. Lansky holds him tight, then, until he’s forced to go downstairs to start breakfast.

A few nights, Benjamin comes knocking at their door. He crawls into bed with them, huddled in between the two, and Luciano holds him tight. On those nights, Lansky sleeps easier with his brother by his side. He knows Luciano doesn’t. But Luciano’s quieter on those nights : mutely wakes Lansky with a hand on the shoulder if he’s too terrified to fall asleep.

They’re both getting exhausted. If sleeping for only half the night is wearing Lansky down to the point of taking afternoon naps, then Luciano is sabotaging himself by only sleeping from six in the morning to noon. It has Lansky more than worried that he won’t be able to heal quickly : get the mobility in his fingers back. But Luciano’s strict with his stretching regimen, and Benjamin often helps and encourages him.

In the meantime, Lansky cooks all three meals and drives. He does the laundry and cleans the house. And while none of these activities are necessarily new, it is new that he’s not splitting them with someone else.

The newest development is Luciano’s growing insistence that Lansky learn how to cook the kinds of meals that Luciano cooks for dinner.

“No, you fucking idiot, keep stirring.”

Lansky cannot believe how ridiculous this pot of rice is becoming. “I’ve been stirring for fifteen minutes,” he snaps back. “I think it can handle being left alone for two minutes while I clean up the counter.”

“It’s risotto,” Luciano bitches. “You keep stirring for an hour.”

He steals a bit of rosemary with his right hand. Lansky glares at the man as he eats right off the cutting board.

“Then, maybe you can clean up.”

“In case you forgot, I can only slightly move my fingers.” Luciano waves a hand. “All I can do is pinch things.”

“Don’t lie to me. I saw you put a record on yesterday afternoon.”

“Fuck you. That hurt like a bitch, and it took fifteen goddamn minutes to do.” Benjamin awkwardly clears his throat from where he sits at the dinner table. Luciano backtracks a little. “Uh, sorry, Benny.”

“It’s okay!”

Lansky kicks a foot at Luciano’s ankle.

“Are you keeping an eye on the salmon?”

Lansky glances at the salmon. “I know how to cook.”

“You’re doing a shit job at it. You don’t just treat the ingredients like they’re a means to an end. You got to taste them, enjoy the cooking as much as the meal.”

“Sorry I’m not Italian enough for you.”

Luciano’s mouth snaps shut into an ugly scowl. Lansky’s pissed him off. “We’re not having that conversation again.”

Lansky hesitates. “Sorry,” he mutters. He can feel Benjamin’s eyes on them.

Luciano’s quiet for a second before he walks over to Benjamin, leaving Lansky alone at the stove.

“English homework?” Luciano asks Benjamin.

“Yeah. I have an essay tomorrow in-class for this book.”

Lansky tunes them out. The pot of rice he’s stirring doesn’t seem so annoying anymore. Instead, it begins to feel like he’s stealing some of Luciano’s position in the household. This meal isn’t his to cook, and, yet, here he stands with the wooden spoon in his hand.

And, so, he continues stirring rather than cleaning the countertop off. Luciano floats back over to him after a little, nitpicking Lansky’s stirring pattern and the way he’s adding the chicken broth to the pot. Lansky bickers back a little, keeping things light, but the way Luciano looks at him tells Lansky that his bad mood is too transparent.

They eat together in a tense atmosphere. Benjamin talks about his classes with Luciano. Occasionally, Lansky adds a sentence or two to the conversation. When he does, Luciano looks at him with careful eyes. Lansky doesn’t like the way Luciano’s trying to figure him out. Lansky doesn’t like when anyone tries to figure him out. But, it’s over in a second every time, and Luciano builds off of Lansky’s words with his own comment.

There’s been a few conversations in the last four months about Benjamin’s growing interest in the arts. And tonight is another of those conversations, courtesy of the charcoal sketch that Benjamin had brought home from school that afternoon.

“Well,” Luciano’s stubbornly working with the fork balanced indelicately in his hand. He’s refusing to let Lansky feed him tonight. “Do you think you prefer the charcoals or the pastels?”

“I don’t know.” Benjamin, like Lansky, was eyeing Luciano’s fork. “Maybe the charcoal?”

“Yeah?”

Benjamin hums. “But I also like the pastels. I don’t think I really know yet. Mr. Potts only lets us use pastels for one mini-project if we stay in the arts class until our final year. I just got to use the butts leftover from the class ahead of us.”

“Would you want a set?”

Lansky clears his throat a little. He’s a little displeased that Luciano’s acting as if he still has a say in Benjamin’s future. Until they find a resolution to their argument – if they ever do – Lansky thinks Luciano should take a backseat in matters of family.

Luciano narrows his eyes. “What?”

“We can think about it for a future birthday,” Lansky says and gives Luciano a warning look.

Luciano sets his fork down. “If you’ve got something to say to me, just say it.”

“Um,” Benjamin tries. “Can we just eat?”

At Lansky’s prolonged silence, Luciano stands up from his chair. “I’m not that hungry.” He leaves for the staircase.

Once Luciano’s disappeared upstairs, Benjamin turns to Lansky with a deep frown.

“What’s going on?”

“Nothing. Eat your food.”

“No.” Lansky raises an eyebrow, but Benjamin doesn’t budge. “Why are you two arguing?”

Lansky rakes his fork through the rice. “Luciano’s leaving us soon.”

The taste of the salmon in the next bite makes Lansky want to throw out the whole plate. He has no idea why Luciano’s insisting he learn how to cook these sorts of things if Luciano’s just going to leave.

 _Is he trying to be cruel? Luciano_ _’_ _s always had a sadistic streak_.

“He’s leaving?”

Benjamin looks horrified. Lansky hates that he has to break the news to Benjamin himself. It should be Luciano down here talking to him about this.

“Yeah. Soon.”

“Why?”

“A lot happened in the city. There’s nothing for him here anymore.”

“There’s us?”

“There’s you.” Benjamin stares at him. “I have nothing left that could interest Luciano in staying.”

“I don’t understand.”

“It’s my fault that he’s leaving, Benjamin. I did something I shouldn’t have a long time ago now. And it came back for us.”

“With. With that bad cop?” Lansky nods mutely. “But Luciano helped you then.”

“And he helped me again this time. But you’ve seen him, Benjamin. It took a toll.”

“But. But Luciano’s here. He wants to be here.”

Lansky shakes his head. Luciano’s here because he has to recover : has to tie up loose ends. “He’s here for you,” he tells Benjamin. “He’s too attached to you.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Ben-”

“I don’t believe that! I think you need to talk to him about it honestly. He loves you. I know he wants us to stay together.”

Luciano tries really, really hard to not slam the door behind him when he gets into the bedroom. It’s for Benjamin’s sake. If it were just Lansky in the house, the door would have fallen off its hinges with how strong Luciano would have thrown it into the doorframe. But Benjamin is home, and, so, Luciano only closes it a little harsh.

There’s a brief minute as he stands there fuming. Lansky’s side of the bed is closest to the door, as is his nightstand, and Luciano has half a mind to absolutely wreck whatever’s in the drawer. It’s not like they’re going to need anything if things keep going the way they’ve been going.

At the end, though, Luciano only stomps over to his side of the bed and flops down with a huff.

He feels like he spends half his time in bed lately. He lies in bed every night, too terrified to breathe, and sleeps six hours only once the sun’s risen. Once those fourteen hours of his day are past, he only has ten hours left. Usually, he spends them in the kitchen : going through the pamphlet the nurses had given him or just watching Lansky do the house chores.

Luciano realizes he skipped his exercises today when he had gotten caught up in that argument with Lansky at lunchtime. He covers his eyes with his right hand and groans. The pamphlet’s downstairs still, but he’s gone through the motions enough times to have it memorized.

Slowly and shakily, he raises his left hand.

He’s still not used to the sight of it. There’s nothing _wrong_ with not having all his fingers there, of course. A bunch of guys in the city don’t have all their limbs quite there, especially the guys who had crawled up from the streets like Luciano. But it’s the specific finger that’s gone and the specific fingers that are left that infuriate Luciano every time he has to use the hand.

Clenching his teeth, he tries bringing his fingers into a fist. He gets about halfway there, as he’s been averaging the last few days. It’s a weird thought that he’ll, one of these days, get back to the point of being able to feel his nails on his palm. He holds it for thirty seconds before relaxing his hand. Unfurling his fingers and stretching them back aches a little more, and he feels all the more pathetic for wincing at the stretch.

Then, he starts with his thumb and goes through his exercises.

He gets done with his left hand and lets it flop to the comforter. He should move onto the right hand, but he’s tired. Benjamin had passed the door some ten minutes ago on the way back to his bedroom, and Lansky must still be doing the dishes downstairs. Luciano figures he has maybe another thirty minutes before Lansky comes up.

So, he rolls over and stares at the top drawer of his nightstand. He knows, inside, the little black box is pushed all the way to the back of the drawer and has been sitting there since the day he and Lansky got home. It’s hidden behind Luciano’s jewelry box (or so Lansky calls it whenever he feels like teasing Luciano for liking necklaces and earrings) and under the box of cigars that Luciano hasn’t smoked since he moved in with Benjamin.

Increasingly, there seems to be no point in having the rings anymore. In fact, Luciano half expects them to become something very different in meaning : something he’ll wear just to remember the good days once Lansky asks him to leave. He doesn’t want to think about it, though. He busies himself by reaching out for the drawer’s handle.

It takes a little digging, but he soon has the small box in his hands.

Feeling the velvet in his hands, it brings Luciano back to Chicago streets : outside Abate’s with the wind so strong he had his hand on his hat. He remembers the awed look in Matteo’s eyes when he pocketed the box. Luciano snorts. For all Matteo’s bragging about being Luciano’s senior, he’s far behind Luciano in terms of relationship experience. Luciano doubts the idiot will ever get the courage to pester Cecilio for a lifetime together like Luciano did with Lansky.

Luciano opens the box and looks at the rings inside. They’re just as expensive and glittering as the day Luciano (or, rather, Matteo) had bought them.

He’s about to pull one of them out to try on his right hand when the bedroom door’s doorknob starts to turn. Luciano feels every muscle in his body startle and jump, and he snaps the ring box closed. The door opens as he’s throwing it in the drawer. He slams the drawer shut and whirls around.

Lansky stands in the doorway, stopped still, wide eyes still frozen on the nightstand drawer.

“Was that-”

“Nothing!” Luciano half-yells. He laughs a little crazily. “That’s nothing! Don’t worry about it.”

Lansky doesn’t move. His eyes take a second to find Luciano’s. Luciano watches as Lansky’s expression shuts down : emotions retreating behind a careful mask of indifference. Luciano’s heart is climbing up his throat. This isn’t the reaction he had hoped for.

Lansky closes the door. He clears his throat. “I’ll sleep on the couch tonight.”

“What?”

Lansky heads for their bathroom, and Luciano leaps off the bed.

“Hey, wait-”

The bathroom door closes in his face.

Luciano hovers for a minute before he sits down on Lansky’s side of the bed. The wait takes forever. He can hear the faucet being turned on and off. He hears the shower start up. He hears the sound change once Lansky gets in, hears the pipes creak when Lansky turns the shower water off. The sink’s turned on again, and all Luciano can do is bite his lip as he waits.

He decides that maybe laying out Lansky’s pajamas on the bed will, at the very least, give him a chance to keep Lansky’s attention on him. So, he lays Lansky’s pajamas out on the bed and takes his seat again beside them.

Lansky, however, doesn’t seem thrilled with the sight when he opens the bathroom door.

“I think we should talk,” Luciano tries.

Instead of answering him, Lansky dries his hair with the towel and tosses it on the bed. He begins dressing himself in silence.

“Are you even going to listen to me?” Luciano asks.

“What could you even say?”

It’s far from what Luciano had expected for a response, though he’s not sure he was expecting anything specific, either. He’s starting to get confused. If Lansky’s insulted by the money aspect of the rings, he would just say so. Luciano’s already been told a few times to stop trying to buy his way through their relationship.

He catches Lansky’s wrist as Lansky goes to put the towel back in the bathroom. “Wait, Meyer. I’m serious. Sit?”

It takes a second, but Lansky sits on the bed. He keeps himself neutrally facing the bathroom door rather than looking at Luciano, but Luciano will settle for it if it means having a proper talk.

“What do you want to say?”

“I want to ask you if you really don’t want me here anymore.”

A flicker of emotion – upset of some kind – breaks through Lansky’s mask. Lansky turns away. “You won’t get me to ask you to stay.”

Luciano’s mouth goes dry. “You. You really don’t want me here anymore.”

“Don’t say it like I’m the one leaving.” Luciano’s silence must confuse Lansky because he adds, then, “I know it’s my fault. Don’t keep reminding me.”

“Huh? What happened in the city?”

“Don’t play dumb, Luciano, or I’m going downstairs.”

“No, for Christ’s sake,” Lansky curls his lip at the mention of Christ, “Okay, for God’s sake, Lansky. You don’t actually think this is all because you’re not Italian, do you? I know you really hate us, but, by God, shouldn’t you have realized by now that I don’t give a fucking horse’s ass?”

“You made your intentions very clear in the hotel room.”

“When I held you accountable for what you did? When I forgave you, despite everything?”

Lansky stands up to leave. Luciano pulls him back down.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Lansky wrenches his arm free. “Enough’s been said. I’m staying with Benjamin. You’re leaving.”

“What if I don’t want to leave?”

Lansky gives him a scathing glare. “I thought I made myself clear the last time I said that I am not going to tolerate your sadistic tendencies?”

“My _what_?”

“Don’t lie about wanting to stay when you have an engagement ring in your damn nightstand.”

“That’s for _me_! That’s _my_ ring! Because I got my last ring cut off while protecting _you_!”

Lansky blinks slowly, and Luciano loses his composure. He’s not sure what happens in the next few seconds, but, before he can process what he’s doing, Lansky is pinned down on the bed underneath him. A red welt burns on Lansky’s cheek from where Luciano had backhanded him. He stares up in shock at Luciano.

“What? Did you think I was fucking cheating on you? Are we back to square fucking one again? When have I _ever_ been _anything_ other than loyal to you? I haven’t slept with a single person other than you since the day you took me to meet Benjamin and that was _damn well_ before you ever did anything to tell me what you wanted from me.”

Lansky seems to shrink into himself. It’s probably got to do with the fact that Luciano’s stabbing him in the chest with his right index finger hard enough to send shooting pain through his hand.

“I-”

“No, I ain’t finished.” Lansky snaps his mouth shut. “I want you to know that I _knew_ what you were doing with Dewey before you got me in trouble. I saw you two talking near Guy’s place all the way back around the New Year. And I fucking kept my mouth shut about it because I knew why you were doing it.

“You’ve spent so much time worrying about me leaving you. I don’t think you’ve realized yet that you’re the one that kept making _me_ chase after _you_. You didn’t tell me about Dewey yourself, you framed me to Capone, you pulled that fucking stunt of yours in February when you checked Benjamin out of the hospital without even fucking telling me. Now, when I’m in the goddamn hospital busted up after I got _pummeled_ by Amadeo on _your_ behalf, you barely acknowledge me.

“Do you even want me around or not, Meyer?”

Lansky’s lips are parted a little. He stares up at Luciano with some unreadable expression. He’s taking a little too long to respond, and Luciano’s ready to get up and call Matteo to come get him.

“I want you here.” Lansky’s voice is very quiet : a little scratchy. “I want you here with me.”

“Could have fucking fooled me.”

Lansky swallows. “I. I ain’t used to people wanting to stay.”

“I’ve been staying, haven’t I?”

“… Yeah.”

Luciano sits back and gets off of Lansky. He’s said his part. “Well, there you fucking go.” He leaves Lansky there and goes back to his side of the bed. “Take the couch if you want. I don’t care anymore.”

To his credit, Lansky doesn’t leave when Luciano turns the light off. He doesn’t move as Luciano gets settled under the comforters and curls up for a long night of waiting to fall asleep. He hasn’t moved by the time Luciano does fall asleep sometime before dawn.

Luciano wakes to the startling realization that someone’s standing right in front of his face. Every nightmare and spiral of paranoid thoughts from the last month has him flinch back, voice already starting to call for Lansky, before he realizes that the person in front of him is Lansky. A loud snap startles Luciano again, and he flinches further back.

He’s awake just enough to realize that the black thing Lansky’s just put back in the drawer is the ring box.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.”

Luciano stares up at Lansky. He’s exhausted – it has to be early in the morning still – and his eyes are still fuzzy. He can’t tell what expression Lansky’s making.

“Uh, whatever,” he says eloquently. The hand that Lansky had reached out for him retracts. “Give me a few more hours. I’m so fucking tired, man.”

“Alright. I’ll be here when you wake.”

Luciano thinks that’s one hell of an odd thing for Lansky to say to him after everything, but he’s too tired to even consider what Lansky means by it. The moment his head falls back onto the pillow, he’s already half unconscious.

The second time he wakes, Lansky’s in bed beside him reading some book. It’s a familiar feeling, though Lansky doesn’t usually sit so close. The dip in the mattress where he sits is near enough that Luciano’s body is tilted back a little. The sun isn’t coming through the windows anymore, so it has to be approaching noon.

Luciano buries his face in his pillow and groans.

“Feel alright?”

Luciano groans again : for a very different reason. “Meyer, just give me a moment. Christ, I’m not gonna get into it with you the second I wake up.”

There’s a hesitation before Lansky asks, “Do you want coffee?”

 _God, can he shut up?_ “Fine, whatever.”

It’s a good excuse to get Lansky out of the bed and out of the room. The air seems easier to breathe when he’s gone. Luciano lays there for another few seconds, sleepily drinking in the peace of the daytime, before he pulls himself away from the pillow and rolls onto his back to sit up.

It snowed overnight apparently. The snow outside the bedroom windows is bright and clean. Benjamin will want to build a snowman with Lansky and him later.

Building a snowman with Benjamin, as Luciano had found out last Halloween, is more fun than Luciano had anticipated. It had been mostly due to the fact that Benjamin was still too sick to spend more than a half hour outside at a time, so Lansky and Luciano would switch out on ‘snowman duty’ to go to ‘hot cocoa duty.’ Luciano smiles despite himself. For a sixteen year old, Benjamin was still endearingly childish.

The knock on the door wipes his smile away. Lansky enters with a mug of coffee and a platter of biscotti that Luciano’s certain wasn’t in the kitchen last he checked. He scoffs.

“You don’t need to win me over.”

“I’m not trying to win you over.”

“Sure.”

Luciano takes the coffee from Lansky and sets it on the nightstand. Lansky frowns. He knows, just as Luciano knows, that Luciano likes drinking his coffee when it’s still burning hot. But Luciano just wants to get the conversation over with before he indulges in his caffeine and sugar.

“I shouldn’t have hit you last night. That’s on me.”

Lansky shrugs, his eyes immediately looking elsewhere to the floorboards. “That doesn’t matter. I… deserved it.”

Luciano watches him for a minute. Lansky’s not looking up yet. He’s probably expecting Luciano to lay into him again. Luciano reaches for his coffee. The flavor is just as bitter as he likes it, and he steals a biscotti to dip. It’s startling good – vanilla-flavored – and sweet like most of what Lansky buys.

Luciano dips the rest of the biscotti into the coffee and clears his throat. “C’m’ere.”

There’s a pause before Lansky looks up at him in confusion and, hesitating before actually moving, minutely shifts into Luciano’s reach. Luciano presses the biscotti to Lansky’s lips.

“You like sweets more than I do.”

Lansky takes a bite. With his mouth still full, he retorts, “Says the man who can go through a bottle of amaretto in a day. That’s shit’s sweeter than even I can stomach.”

“Yeah, well,” Luciano decides to risk it, “amaretto’s Italian.”

There’s a moment where he’s terrified that the joke really didn’t land with Lansky, if the blank stare is anything to go by. Then, a small smile appears and delights Luciano.

“So,” Luciano smiles and takes another sip of his coffee, “what did you want with the rings earlier?”

“Oh. Uh. I just. I wanted to see what you chose.”

“Yeah?” Lansky’s hands are fidgeting in his lap, and Luciano’s waiting for him to ask the question he’s clearly sitting on. “Too feminine?”

“What? No.”

_Interesting._

“I just,” Lansky clears his throat. “Why do you have two?”

It’s Luciano’s turn to get embarrassed. Now’s his chance to prove all of Matteo’s doubts – and his own – wrong, and he’s a little choked up over what he has to say next.

“Well, the original plan was that I was going to propose again,” he forces himself to admit. “But… well, we haven’t exactly been sweet to each other lately. So, I just kind of figured I’d keep them to myself in case you asked me to leave.”

“Oh.” Lansky winces. “I don’t want you to leave.”

“Yes, I know that now.” Lansky’s still staring at the drawer. Luciano swallows a thickness in his throat. “Did you want the ring?”

“Yes.”

Lansky’s eyes are filled with such sincere intensity that Luciano is unable to be the first to look away from for a second. He turns to the nightstand, feeling his face heat up, and gets out the box.

He opens it on the bed in the space between where they sit, and they look at the rings together.

“Why engagement rings?”

“I liked them. I don’t know. Thought they were pretty.”

“Would they even look alright on our hands?”

Luciano knows what he means. Lansky’s hands are rough with cracked knuckles and old scars on his palms from God knows what, and Luciano’s hands are far from pretty ever since Amadeo got his nutcracker near them. Small little gold bands with sparkling diamonds hardly seem a good match for them.

Luciano takes one of the two rings out of the box. “I guess we’ll see. Right hand.”

Lansky offers up his right hand.

A small, evil little plot unfolds in Luciano’s mind. When Lansky had proposed to him, Luciano had been kissing him as lazily as one could kiss in the hopes that Lansky would just roll them over and start ridding them their clothes. Now, it’s Lansky’s turn to have a ring slipped on his finger mid-kiss.

He leans forwards and offers Lansky a small smile and wink before closing his and pressing his lips against Lansky’s. He shifts a little, sucks a little. Once Lansky’s started to loosen up, Luciano nibbles a little before he licks Lansky’s upper lip. And as Lansky tilts his head a little to give Luciano a better angle, Luciano slides the ring onto Lansky’s right ring finger.

A whine is exhaled from Lansky’s lips.

He pulls away and looks down at his hand. The diamond sits on his finger prettier than Luciano had dared hope. It’s a new page for them. Something a little braver and a little softer : a future of morning kisses and whiskey at night and supporting Benjamin with everything they have.

“It looks good,” is all Luciano can manage to say with his chest so tight.

Lansky hums. “Your turn.” He slips the ring out of its velvet slit. “Right hand.”

The kiss that Luciano gets is much sweeter than what he gave Lansky. Lips press against his cheek as Lansky slides the ring onto Luciano’s finger. It’s followed by a long kiss pressed to his right hand : on the knuckles that are still only beginning their recovery.

“It looks good.” Lansky’s voice is breathy.

Luciano can already feel himself responding favorably with the heat that’s slowly trickling southwards. “Kiss me.”

With hours before Benjamin gets home and no need for the pillow, Luciano lets himself groan as loud as he likes when Lansky presses him down into the mattress.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you so much for reading!!
> 
> additional headcanons that i didn't get the chance to include :  
> \- it's benjamin that gets luciano to be comfortable with the feel of his left hand through copious hand-holding  
> \- benjamin absolutely overhears luciano yelling at lansky and is terrified that the family's going to break up. lansky does nothing to alleviate this fear at breakfast. when benjamin gets home from school, he almost loses his mind at the sight of the rings  
> \- originally luciano was going to wear one of the rings to see lansky's reaction, but the story just didn't end up going in that direction  
> \- lansky's fear of luciano leaving him has been present ever since they first got together (it's actually what was keeping him from even trying to court luciano in the first place)  
> \- matteo eventually comes to visit as a surprise that lansky rlly does not enjoy, but all matteo does is whine to benjamin and luciano about cecilio. luciano just tells matteo to man up and tell cecilio that he wants something permanent. matteo ignores luciano's solid advice in favor of bonding with benjamin (which lansky does not appreciate)  
> \- *matteo voice* "oh? this bambino looks a lot like my santo."  
> \- *luciano voice* "they're the same person twice."  
> \- benjamin goes to the philadelphia art school eventually for art history and lands a job at the chicago institute when he's like thirty. luciano and lansky are simultaneously overjoyed and know absolutely nothing about what benjamin does  
> \- *luciano voice* "what's a renoir"  
> \- *benjamin voice* "well, he's a person. he's a painter."  
> \- *lansky voice* "like mozart?"

**Author's Note:**

> Tino -- Tsumugi  
> Matteo -- Itaru  
> Cecilio -- Chikage  
> Amadeo -- Azami  
> Kuni -- Kumon  
> Santo -- Sakuya


End file.
